That didn't take long. Last night CBS' The Late Show out-dueled, NBC's The Tonight Show. According to Nielsen's early metered market numbers, David Letterman and The Late Show had a 3.4 household rating while Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show pulled a 2.9 HH rating. That's Conan's lowest performance since taking over the show, and the first time The Late Show has beaten The Tonight Show since October.
While Howard Stern will likely take the credit for appearing on Letterman's show Monday night and vowing to take down The Tonight Show, Conan's biggest foe last night might have been the NHL Stanley Cup Finals. While Pittsburgh Penguins fans rejoice (as well as fans of game sevens!), due to the nature of live sports, airing a sporting event in primetime meant that on the west coast, in big markets like Los Angeles and San Francisco there was local programming airing during the latter part of the west coast's prime-time.
James Hibberd has some additional info.
Update: note the comments below, The Tonight Show came in behind Nightline's 3.1 as well.
Sorry, because of the problems moderating comments on these Conan/Dave posts, commenting is now turned off.
I’m so proud for Dave.
I wonder if Nightline will beat Conan soon.
The weird thing about this Tonight Show is that Conan can lose to dave but if he wins in the 18 – 49 demos it won’t even matter.
Conan has only himself to blame- when the funniest part of your show is people saying how bad a comedian you are, I don’t blame people for not watching.
Wes is indeed correct, demo viewers are meaningful to financial success, total viewers are not. Sadly, for late night shows we don’t see demo numbers except via trade press or press releases. We will publish them as soon as we get them.
Dave has gotten pretty vile lately with his latest joke alluding that Palins 14 year old daughter was a prostitute that had to avoid running into Elliot Spitzer. And the night before his joke about her being the victim or statutory rape by A-Rod at the baseball game was ugly. Only heard about those from a news site review of Letterman. I cant imagine what the reaction would be if something like that were said about Obamas daughters. I understand Letterman hates Palin, but he should leave her kids out of it.
Dave hasnt been funny since the 80s. Stopped watching in the mid 90s completely. Once went to CBS he lost what he had.
No fan of Conan either, he just isnt funny.
Futon gets the late-night numbers each day: CONAN lost to NIGHTLINE as well: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/ratings.aspx?id=tuesday
thatguy, those are the same metered market HH ratings as in the post above (although Robert didn’t include the Nightline number). What we do not get are the 18-49 demo ratings, and Futon Critic doesn’t have them either.
Sad the COnana looks likely to make the Tonight show down in total viewers and 18-49.
It’s really pretty funny to see all of the ratings sites go nuts over Conan having *one* night where he’s beaten by Letterman. Can someone remind me how long it took Jay Leno, an established Tonight Show host coming off the massive ratings of Carson’s last weeks, to start to consistently beat David Letterman? Oh that’s right, it took YEARS. *One* night means nothing.
I think Bristol Palin is like 17 or 18 but David Letterman has been disgusting when referencing the Palin. He is trying to be like Jon Stewart or something but is more like Keith Olbermann. Letterman is so disgusting when he talks about the Palins.
You’re definitely right Chief, but don’t forget Conan has had FIFTEEN years to build a fanbase on his late night show – Leno obviously did not (Leno was only a sub host for 5 years). While a few days doesn’t make a trend, I don’t think NBC was thinking that Conan would be duking it out with Letterman so quickly.
Fifteen years at 12:30 is a little different from fifteen years at 11:30.
And I guess it was conveniently left out that the end of the NBA game took up the first half of the Tonight Show. I am a Conan fan and an NBA fan and I chose to watch the ending of the game since I can always go back and watch the beginning of the Tonight Show on Hulu. I am thinking that I was not the only person to do that.
Yeah, except Letterman’s ratings went UP from Monday – so are you saying that there’s NO basketball fans who like Letterman? Why is it that only Conan’s ratings suffered from the game?
DM, huh? The NBA game aired on a different network. Did the NHL game run well past 11pm? Whenever it was, it was 3 hours earlier here, so I lost track of that time.. Nevermind, misread your comment. You were saying basketball coverage on ABC competed with Conan. Yes, but to the comment above mine’s point, it didn’t seem to hurt Letterman.It should be noted that the preliminary early metered market numbers often differ a lot from the later, and still preliminary fast nationals (which are not produced for Late Night shows). The difference between the preliminary metered market numbers and the final numbers can very hugely, and because there is less viewing with the late night shows in general, the variance can be high.
Unfortunately, we don’t see those final numbers until almost a week later. usually NBC/ABC/CBS put out all the press releases for the late night show’s with final numbers on the following Thursday — we should see LAST week’s final numbers tomorrow (and will post them) and this week’s, next Thursday, etc.
I’m so happy! Dave is much better than Conan.
This cannot be a happy moment for NBC to see Conan already playing second-fiddle in any significant element of the ratings. If Conan is going to do a fade in the ratings from unqualified 1st place — regardless of Stern or hockey — then that portends a problem for him and the Tonight Show.
Maybe Conan will pull out of the dive, maybe not. Only time will tell on that. But hitting this benchmark this quickly cannot be a good thing for NBC or Conan and will only enliven the flight of brickbats about the entire Leno-Conan move for the rest of the summer (at the least) unless Conan reverses the trend and starts back up on the scale (or Letterman starts downward himself). Maybe NBC should have just paid the huge buyout in Conan’s contract and left Leno and Conan where they were? Maybe NBC is going to stick with it, come fire or flood? Stay tuned! Same brickbat time — same brickbat channel!
There is already talk of Leno coming back to Tonight (which may have been the real reason NBC kept him under contract in the first place). If Conan continues to droop, NBC will gladly pay him off and send him on his way, where he will be damaged goods that no other network will pick up.
Those thinking Conan will get back viewers are fooling themselves. Leno started back behind Letterman but you really cannot compare the two situations. Leno was actually good, Conan is actually unfunny and silly most of the time. Nice gft gorm NBC for CBS