An appearance by President Barack Obama, a first for a sitting president, delivered the highest Tonight Show rating in metered market households since the program's tribute to Johnny Carson in Jan. 2005. The Tonight Show delivered an 11.2/26 rating Thursday, tying the Carson tribute and improving upon its season average by 187%. The last time The Tonight Show drew a higher metered market rating was May, 1998, following the Seinfeld series finale, when it drew a 12.4.
The show was the fourth highest rated metered market household rating in the 16 years Leno has been hosting the program. The only nights topping it were Leno's first night hosting in May, 1992, the night of the Cheers finale in May, 1993 and the night of the Seinfeld finale.
via Broadcasting & Cable.
Wow thats amazing. So is that about 24-25 million people?
Obama is ratings gold, apparently.
So how many people watched it?
Not too many Special Olympics kids, I hope.
Tommy, there’s no way to really convert household rating into viewers, since it depends how many viewers were watching in each household. But an 11.2 rating equals approximately 12.75 mil households. The viewers should be at least slightly above that.
Viewership numbers will likely be revealed today via press release, but the HH ratings are always available earlier.
GRD I agree, everything was fine until Obama said that and I went “Oh no he didn’t!”
I figured the ratings would be through the roof. Love Leno already, but the combo of Obama and Garth Brooks was dynamite. And our Commander-in-Chief actually has a personality, so it was a win-win for NBC.
Assume 1.4 million viewers per home and you’ll generally be in the ballpark
The POTUS fared quite well, and he didn’t even have a Seinfeld lead-in
More data here, including impact for Fallon and Carson Daily (though still all metered market HH numbers, no viewer numbers yet):
http://nbcumv.com/release_detail.nbc/entertainment-20090320000000-withanhistoricpre.html
Probably around 16-19 million viewers on average and around 25 million watching the interview portion.
Congrats to our POTUS for making Leno watchable for once….
I think Leno should get that guy Kolan McConiughey who claims to have a 266 Bowling average in the Special Olympics to have a BOWL-OFF with Obama on the very first episode when Leno moves to 10 PM. That would be MUST SEE TV !!!
Special Olympian Challenges Obama in bowling
TMZ.com ^ | 03/20/2009 | TMZ.com
Posted on Friday, March 20, 2009 12:49:08 PM by Beaten Valve
A bowling phenom in the Special Olympics has just challenged Prez Barack Obama to a White House roll-off … and he’ll probably kick Barack’s butt.
Kolan McConiughey, a Special Olympics competitor who has bowled three perfect 300 games, tells TMZ that the Prez has to score a lot higher than 129 to beat him. Kolan says he bowls an average of 266.
Kolan — who works at a grocery store in Ann Arbor, Mich. — said he’d love to go to the White House to beat Barack on his own lane. Kolan said, “He’s cool, but he can’t beat me.”
We posed the challenge to the White House. They said “no comment.”
That’s awesome. Go Kolan! I hope they do it — talk about high ratings!
Yes, Mr. Zucker, you can be #1 again…
POTUS on 30 Rock
POTUS on Heroes
POTUS on Kings
First Lady Reality Series – she’s a fashonista with a house to decorate, events to plan, world leaders to greet! Michelle Obama seems a truly wonderful woman. Yet judging by the PM Gordon Brown reception, she could use some help in the gift-giving/dinner-hosting social etiquette
People wonder why Obama agreed to do Leno but not Meet The Press. Now we know why.
I watched it, Jays monolouge was horrible,he is a weak interviewer. Im going back to watching Letterman after this basketball crap.
Weird…seeing all the positive comments…I thought both Leno and Obama looked uncomfortable. For two of the most casual people on TV I thought the pair were pretty painful to watch interact.
isn’t that 15 million people.