While Conan O'brien's debut as host of The Tonight Show last week went about as expected -- a good start with consecutive declines, a new week brings new headlines. In the metered market household rating numbers for Monday night, only a tenth of a ratings point separated The Late Show (3.0) from The Tonight Show (3.1).
Howard Stern fans will likely ascribe Dave catching up to Stern's popularity rather than any success on Dave's part (other than having him on) or failure on Conan's part.
I am expecting massive amounts of speculation, and that the "Will NBC pull Jay Leno from prime-time and put him back at 11:30pm?" speculation will commence even before Leno has hosted his first show in prime-time in September.
While I'd say there's no chance Leno won't be hosting his new show in prime-time come September, let the speculation begin!
Sorry, because of the problems moderating comments on these Conan/Dave posts, commenting is now turned off.
Well one day does not make a trend, but a 3.0 is pretty atypical for Late Night anyways…we’ll see what happens though!
Letterman hosts “The Late SHOW”, not “Late NIGHT”. Geez.
Conan is not entertaining. He treats the show as if it is still on at 12:35 and it still feels like the B show. I don’t find Dave entertaining either, i wish he would retire and Craig Ferguson would take over. Craig is great.
Dave’s fixing his teeth? i hate his gap
Conan is great. CBS wins in everything else, let us NBC fans have a good late night rating streak!
Dave should close the gap between his teeth first.
Let’s see what happens tomorrow, could be an outliner. Howard Stern was on Letterman, plus Colbert had his first show from Iraq; he shares a similar young audience as Conan.
Although Conan will have a tough week ahead of him. Letterman’s line-up more or less beats Conan’s every night. It looks like Letterman surrendered the first week to Conan voluntarily, and now he is making his big push.
@Spungo, I’m still stuck in 1983. Sorry
I agree that Colbert having his show in Iraq hurt Conan. We’re going to see that throughout the Conan era. Whenever Colbert has high-profile shows, it will hurt Conan much more than he hurt Leno because of the similar audience they share. I haven’t watched Colbert in months, but I decided to choose him last night over Conan from 11:30-12 because I knew he was going to have (SPOILER ALERT) his hair shaved off on Obama’s orders.
Watched Colbert and then switched to Letterman. Letterman always brings out the best in Howard Stern. Stern kept saying that he was told he had to beat Conan for Dave. Maybe Dave should make Howard Stern a regular guest.
Conan really only has himself to blame- last week’s shows were horrible and the attempt on Friday to copy what Jay did the week before was awful.
I agree with mark, conan’s show has a 12 30 feel to it and I like conan. It feels low budget, almost amateur,just a bunch of writers hanging out trying to be funny, which was cool at 12 30, and is cool on cable, but doesn’t work for an 11 30 broadcast. Its a fish out of water.
The tonight show will probably never be what it was in the day of Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. They were geniuses and we will probably not see anyone of their caliber again. Jay is not in their class but he is good. Conan is irritating, obnoxious, boring and embarrassing.
Oh wow, Letterman DIDN’T win? That bodes really poorly for him, I thought for sure Howard Stern being his guest would boost him past Conan for at least the night. I’m not entirely sure he’ll actually be able to beat Conan at this rate. As Stern pointed out on his own show, he was supposed to be Letterman’s Hugh Grant.
As for Colbert in Iraq, I think it only hurt Conan a little bit more than Letterman. Colbert’s been a frequent guest on both shows and both shows do pretty well with the young crowd. Honestly, Colbert’s not going to really tip the scales too strongly one way or the other in this battle. Now when Letterman was up against Leno, he may have been hurting Letterman a bit (only a bit though), since he and Leno had totally different crowds.
Conan is a hopelessly underpowered, unlikable clown who’s wit is consistently upstaged by his haircut. He is the middle aged incarnation of that loud-mouthed ignoramus that used to sit behind you in junior high that either told the same joke day after day or burped and then went giddy enjoying his own wit. He is uniformly awful and unfunny.
Conan is to late night what Couric is to the evening news: ego slowly drowning in incompetence.
but you have to remember that with NBC mantaning the “coveted” lol 4th place. NBC is experimenting online. According to NBC Conan is getting lots of views online via HULU and NBC.COM so if Conan holds his own and does well online NBC will be Happy
Cody, not sure where you’re hearing ” if Conan holds his own and does well online NBC will be Happy”, but online viewing isn’t likely to make NBC happy in the absence of TV viewing.
thats my speculations, their experimenting on how they can make money online so if Conan’s a hit and at least makes some money online i think NBC will be happy.
Dave is the King of Late Night. He already was — ratings aren’t the only thing to determine that. CBS wants to extend his contract until 2012 — I hope he stays until they have to carry him out feet first. Dave rules.
I’m not shocked about last night’s low numbers. I watched it, and David Duchovney’s interview was remarkably awkward. I felt VERY uncomfortable watching it, and David’s jokes fell flat. Even the audience didn’t respond to him. I’m actually shocked more people didn’t change the channel.