The show goes on

The refrain of "stay at home" continues to resonate across the state as we all try to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This has been easier for some than others.

Obviously there are a great many people that physically cannot do their jobs from home, but even those that can face difficulties.

In watching various groups try to coordinate teleconference meetings, it's become very apparent that not enough people have ever participated in a 40-man raid dungeon in "World of Warcraft." Coordinating multiple people to accomplish a task, sharing files online, setting up voice and video chat. The skills that have been a baseline for online gaming for years have suddenly become exceptionally valuable in the "real world."

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the entertainment industry.

Transitioning to a home office is complicated no matter what industry you're in, but in the case of late night television it's been a particularly interesting development. Over the last several weeks the hosts of televisions talk show line-up have had to shed the comforts of their professionally equipped stages and live studio audience and cobble together programming from their living room using whatever tech they have lying around.

The results have been varied across the TV spectrum.

Watching Stephen Colbert struggle to capture audio for an interview has been an eye opening experience. This is a man that has been producing professional quality television for the better part of two decades, now working with the production tools of a hobbyist YouTuber. Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon struggles with looking into the camera, rather than the screen, when interviewing guests. If it weren't for the name recognition and subscriber count, you would be hard pressed to identify the difference between them and any random person with a smart phone and a YouTube channel.

One of the most notable differences has been the loss of the live audience. The instinct to pause for audience laughter is ingrained into these hosts and their writing, so while John Oliver has managed to create a relatively professional looking home studio so he can deliver his segments as he normally would, watching his show without audience reactions is a little off-putting. Bill Mahar has somewhat avoided this by having his editors splice in canned laughter at the appropriate times, fully embracing the surrealism of the situation by presenting vintage theater goers applauding wildly at the monologue he shoots in his back yard on an iPhone.

While they're all steadily improving over time, the way big name television personalities have adapted to the quarantine situation is in stark contrast to the younger generation of YouTube personalities.

Like everybody else, news aggregator Philip DeFranco has had to abandon his studio for a home set-up. Unlike the television personalities though, working from home really is like coming home again. DeFranco, like most YouTubers, got his start producing content with personal cameras and home computers. This has allowed him to smoothly transition his show's production without any noticeable changes.

The same is true for many of the podcasts out there, which were already built around coordinating hosts and guests with video conferencing.

For years now, YouTubers have had to spend a lot of time developing the skills needed to create quality content on par with television productions with minimal resources. Now television stars are having to learn how to do the same. Of course the TV stars still have millions of dollars and a crew of professionals a phone call away to walk them through the technical details, so their learning curve is probably going to be relatively small.

In the meantime though, it's been fascinating to watch people at the apex of their industry forced down to the same level as the rest of us.v It makes you wonder what dynamics will change once this is all over with.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and may need to invest in a green screen and some lights to step up his game while the playing field is even.