So does this mean late night does not matter? No. It matters to some. Just not nearly as much as other forms of media today. Including Twitter, apparently, where Fallon has 11 million followers. If they all watched his show, then it would become an incredibly influential program. But even he admitted in the Vanity Fair interview they probably won’t.

It used to be that minority artists, like all artists, were reliant on a very narrow number of outlets to promote upcoming projects. An appearance on The Tonight Show could therefore make or break a movie or series. But that’s no longer the case today. The success of BET’s original programming, including the drama Being Mary Jane, has not been due to coverage in the mainstream media but courting its target audience of black women through social media. The show was enough of a surprise hit that it warranted a Businessweek profile.

So maybe women and racial minorities should abandon late night to white men and the increasingly older population that seems to still care about it. I’d prefer that than to see another half-hearted crusade to convince a network to hire a woman or racial minority for the sake of doing so—diversity for diversity’s sake, as they say—and see him or her fail.