Ever wonder what it’s like to attend a live taping of a “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” episode?

From March 9-12, I was in New York City for the 2013 College Media Association conference. After the daily sessions, we were free to explore the vast wilderness that is NYC.

I didn’t care for most of it, but that’s not what this is about.

Several weeks prior to the conference, I called the NBC ticket hotline to reserve seats for LNFJ. The do this on a standard system, with a set amount of time in-between when you can reserve them and when the taping date is.

As luck would have it, the day I called they had just started taking reservations for Monday, March 11’s show. It could not have worked out better.

You’re only allowed to request 4 tickets at a time and you must wait 6 months before attending another taping of SNL or LNJF.

At around 2:30 p.m. on Monday, we left our hotel, the Sheraton, on 7th Ave. and make the quick walk to 30 Rockefeller Center. My reservation email instructed us to go to the MSNBC Café on the second floor of the NBC Experience store. There, we checked in and retrieved our wristbands which ensured our admittance into the taping. We were required to come back at 4:30 p.m. where we would be ushered upstairs.

And when they say 4:30, they mean 4:30.

We returned at 4:20 to the lobby of 30 Rock, where a young, hipster looking NBC staffer spouted off a clearly well rehearsed bit of rhetoric regarding how if she could see us, we needed to move, we weren’t allowed to wait by the escalator that would lead us upstairs, and it’s not 4:30 right now. She repeated the same thing at 4:28, as if it really made a difference.

We weren’t allowed to form a line, for some reason. Instead a large, wide crowd of people gathered down the hall, which was more of a fire hazard than a single file line along the wall adjacent to the escalator, in my opinion.

Once 4:30 came, it was a free for all. Again, raising questions in my mind about the ill-conceived admittance system. The crowd of roughly 250 rushed toward the escalator, all with hopes of getting a “good seat.”

To the chagrin of all, seats were predetermined.

Once we got upstairs they separated us by letters and numbers. The back of our tickets indicated what we were. My group was a letter, N. Letters went to the right side of the upper level once we got off the escalator. There, they clustered us into groups of letters. Because “M” wasn’t there, we were in the front of our cluster.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, a security guard went cluster by cluster informing us that we’d soon be going through a metal detector “that detects metal.” Go figure. We needed to prepare ourselves for this. Mentally. Physically. Spiritually. Ok, I’m adding the last part.

But we also were not permitted to have our phones on. Not even on airplane or vibrate. This was to prevent any photography from being taken within the studio. I found out how serious they were about this later.

The letters were released first. Once it was our turn to move, we went back downstairs, around a corner, through the metal detector and up an elevator to Studio 6B. We waited in the hallway for around 10 minutes before being admitted.

Slowly, the line crept toward the entrance. Once we were in, they asked us how many were in our group. Three. A young woman ushered us to our seats.

We were in the second row, center section.

Two seats nearest the isle were taped off. Our seats began after the second seat. After a couple minutes it clicked. Those were taped off because Jimmy would likely be interacting with whoever sat there. Sure enough, after the monologue, Mets Bucket Hat Guy swapped seats with the middle-aged woman in the second seat.

Before the show began though, a staff member, and likely aspiring comedian, warmed up the crowd by giving a humorous rendition of the policies and what to do during the show. Mainly, clap and laugh anytime anyone said anything even remotely funny. If you couldn’t handle that tall order on your own, lights that said “Applause” would light up above your head.

The Roots, LNJF’s house band, came out first. They played a couple songs, a few of them danced around with their instruments. This got the crowd moving. Then Steve Higgins, or just Higgins, came out and got us ready for Jimmy’s introduction.

The studio was a lot smaller than it seems on television. This could be because the cameras are as far away as possible from what they’re shooting, perhaps to add an element of depth. If you were stand in the middle of the studio floor, to your 9 o’clock would be Higgins’ podium, 10 & 11 would be the guests chairs and Jimmy’s desk, respectively. Directly ahead is the curtain, and behind it is where the musical act will perform. To your right is The Root’s setup. Behind you are cameras and the audience. It’s very small.

The guests were Justin Timberlake, Timothy Olyphant and Dee Snyder. Timberlake was also the musical guest, as he was fresh off hosting SNL the previous Saturday and heavily promoting his upcoming album, “The 20/20 Experience.”

If you watched that episode, it was great to see how well Jimmy and Justin interacted. Even during commercials they were making us laugh. Jimmy especially would interact well with the audience during commercial breaks. They would take about five minute “commercial breaks” for everyone to prepare for the upcoming segment, but The Roots would play so the crowd wouldn’t grow restless.

After the show, we slowly migrated out of the studio. I made the mistake, if you’d like to call it that, of turning my phone on before I was completely out. I didn’t take any pictures, just checked my inbox. Once I was about to leave, a staffer pulled me aside. She said she saw me on my phone and asked me to open my photo gallery to ensure I didn’t surreptitiously record or take any secret photographs of the studio. I didn’t, so my life was spared.

Overall, it was a pretty unique experience. I got to see Justin Timberlake perform “Pusher Love Girl” live, so that was pretty neat. The timing was just perfect. They don’t have the guests lined up when you reserve your tickets, so it’s really a crapshoot. I guess I hit the jackpot.