On Tuesday night, Jupiter aligned with Mars, Julia Roberts aligned with David Letterman, and The Late Show beat Conan O'brien and The Tonight Show when it came to household Nielsen ratings according to preliminary metered market data, when Dave got a 3.4 rating and Conan got a 2.9 rating.
But Conan was back on top on Wednesday night, barely edging out Dave in the preliminary metered market data for Wednesday night when The Tonight Show scored a 3.2 household rating and The Late Show scored a 3.1 rating.
As much ink as Letterman was getting about his Palin comments, I thought he might have the edge again last night. Either way, it looks like the late night wars are back on.
Sorry, because of the problems moderating comments on these Conan/Dave posts, commenting is now turned off.
Go Conan!
I’m a little confused…what’s the difference between the above ratings, and these:
>>In the late-night metered markets, NBC’s “Conan” (4.3/11) took top honors over CBS’s “Letterman” (2.8/7) and ABC’s “Nightline” (2.7/6). Rounding out the night then were CBS’s “Ferguson” (1.4/5), ABC’s “Kimmel” (1.2/4) and “Fallon” (1.9/7) and “Daly” (1.1/5) on NBC.
It seems like Conan had a much stronger ratings performance based on these numbers…
(from TheFutonCritic.com)
Anon, you’re looking at ratings for the wrong day- the Futon Critic hasn’t put up last night’s numbers yet.
Not sure where you got those numbers at thefutoncritic.com, couldn’t find them myself. Last week’s numbers from Thursday perhaps? Best I can guess.
That said, NBC should be worried. Their powerhouse is no longer a sure thing.
Go Dave!
Oops you’re right, that’s last week…my apologies.
Summer is a nice time to be outdoors on playground equipment. Perhaps it is also a good time for late night television shows to be on see-saws as well.
Wow! Nikki Finke really has the knives out for NBC/Conan…geez!
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/whats-nbcus-zucker-gonna-do-now-david-letterman-tops-conan-obrien-in-last-nights-ratings/
Conan will be fine.
In a business sense, putting Leno back on the Tonight Show is a bad move. Why? …because NBC is probably getting a cheaper Tonight Show out of Conan and to put dramas (or even reality shows) back in the 10PM slot is probably more expensive than having Leno there, Conan at 11:35, and Fallon at 12:35.
Plus, Conan is definitely bringing younger viewers to the night. He even outrated Leno’s final week demo performance of a 2.0 despite the lower overall viewership. He’ll continue to outperform Letterman in the demo. As long as that doesn’t change, he’ll be ok.
If Letterman can survive after years and years of being #2, Conan can definitely survive being #1/#2 in viewers and #1 in the demo.
This late-night war is infinitely more entertaining than the constant Leno tops Letterman non-war before. Don’t you think?
Taylor…you’re completely right. I agree!
Yeah this is what i figured would happen. I think Letterman is great but I don’t think he will consistently beat Conan. Plus Conan will easily beat Dave in the 18-49 demo.
I actually have a feeling Conan might have a higher 18 – 49 demo then Leno. I know a lot of my friends who are watching the tonight show for the first or because of the fact that Conan is hosting. It will be very interesting to see the numbers tomorrow.
Nevermind I just read the post about 18 – 49 viewers and I was right. Conan is king to young adults.
I can’t imagine anyone within NBC is that surprised that Conan isn’t pulling the same numbers as Leno, surely they were aware of the different audiences the two men appeal to before they made the switch. And I’d agree as long as Conan continues to dominate the demos as he has so far then he’ll be fine and NBC will be more than happy and what we’ll see are CBS press releases touting Letterman’s total audience and NBC releases touting Conan’s demo performance.
On another note has Letterman benefited from Leno moving to prime time? I mean that in the sense of has he picked up the Leno viewers who aren’t watching Conan or are the two shows now on a level playing field because of Conan bleeding? Or a combination of the two?
I think it will be interesting to see how the ratings for tonight and Friday turn out. I posted my thoughts yesterday about how the NBA game may have taken viewers away from Conan on Tuesday night since they are marketed towards the same demographic. There is another NBA game tonight that will probably overlap into the first quarter of The Tonight Show and Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Friday night might run long due to the championship coverage.
Well, Conan still seems uncomfortable and show isn’t as good as late night, and they have made clear mistakes (Andy is back, in the God’s name why?)
They also don’t seem to know what comedy pieces of old show take with them, year 2000 was clear mistake, it should have been buried with the old show.
Anyway, Conan is great in improvisation agnd acting to the moment, that’s what I always like about him.
Leno was great telling jokes, but I often turn channel when he start to interview guests, boring and unsurprising questions and conversation.
In Late night some interviews were totally hilarious and uncanny when they start to talk something totally unplanned stuff and forgot to market the new film or whatever the guest was there to promoting.
I hope Conan start to improvise more than he have done so far in the Tonight show.
Conan is my favourite. He is funny.
LOVE Conan O’Brien! I hope he continues to do well. Jay Leno and David Letterman suck. O’Brien is the reason I started watching The Tonight Show.
The letterman show is quite simply unwatchable. Even the Stern interview was horrible. Dave is having to have these big a list guests just to barely beat Conan. This will obviously never last and Dave should just get used to second like he has always been
Letterman is undeniably funnier than Conan, and I like Conan. Conan is uncomfortable because he knows who he’s up against. Go Dave Go!
Lets rock all the way CoCo! Conan Rocks!!!
From Nikki Finke: “Especially now that NBC executives have barraged Leno and his people with network edicts indicating the brass is favoring Conan’s show, like demands that Jay back off booking A-list celebrities because it would encroach on O’Brien’s turf. ”
Ooh, this looks bad for Leno. First, they’re suggesting he go back to the old days when the host had to pitch advertiser’s products himself, and now they’re micromanaging his show.
This is shaping up to be a disaster for Leno.