On Monday, (1-22-18), I arrived back at JFK before the crack of dawn thus ending my 5 month long holiday in Tel Aviv. Even though I had just spent 12 hours on a plane without getting much sleep, I was looking forward to spending the next 4 days in New York City with my parents, along with just being back on home soil. While I would love to discuss our trip in the Big Apple, I wanna talk about an experience I had never experienced before, being an audience member on a live tv show.
The Daily Show hosted by Trevor Noah is a late night news satire program on Comedy Central. My parents are more avid watchers of the show but I tune in whenever I can depending on my schedule. While the taping we went to wasn’t necessarily live, it felt like it was a live recording because of all the behind the scenes culture going on around us. My mom had gotten the general tickets a week before but they were not guaranteed admission. In order to make sure we could see the show, we got in line at around 3:15pm. After waiting in line for almost 3 hours and warming up in and out of the Subway nearby in line, we were finally allowed to go into the “Guaranteed Seating” line and were handed tickets onto the show! We waited a little more time in line, went through security and finally were let into the building.
As we walked onto the set, we were guided to the FRONT ROW! I guess sometimes on the show, they put about 8 seats on the floor in front of the stands where the rest of the audience sat so the cameramen can give a visual that theres more people in the audience than there really were. We were allowed to use our phones but only before the taping started so my parents and I snapped a couple shots and chatted with the folks around us. The stage manager and audience coordinator talked to us, telling us what to do during the show for a while and soon before we know it, camera started rolling and out came Trevor Noah! Ah! He’s so adorable in person and I LOVE his accent.
The taping went great, his jokes were funny and he only needed to do a redo once. I even noticed that one of the cameramen, had a photo of his kids (I was assuming) clipped onto the back of the camera, how cute. I really enjoyed being an audience member on the show because as someone who may or may not have an interest going into the media industry, I got to see what goes on behind the scenes of a late night TV show in New York City.
If you’re DYING to attend a taping of a TV show, you should:
-buy the tickets online
-get in line early and actually stay there
-eat food in line so you won’t be hungry and the wait line could take HOURS
Thats all for now, until next time!
xo
