via press release:
THIS JUST IN…
…From CBS Entertainment
DAVE'S WINNING STREAK HITS 10
LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN topped "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" in viewers for the 10th consecutive week, according to Nielsen live plus same day ratings for an atypical week ending Sept. 11 that included a Labor Day rebroadcast special and a late start on Wednesday due to the Presidential Congressional address.
LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN delivered a 2.4/06 in households with an average of 3.28m viewers. LATE SHOW beat "The Tonight Show" in viewers (3.28m vs. 2.93m, +12%).
THE LATE LATE SHOW with CRAIG FERGUSON posted a 1.2/04 in households with 1.56m viewers, its largest weekly average audience since the week ending July 10.
Editor's Note: Monday's special broadcasts were reruns. Wednesday's broadcasts aired with amended titles due to late starts after President Obama's Congressional address and were not a part of the weekly average.
I really would have loved to hear Letterman this week with the Jay premiere.
I knew that David Letterman would beat the tonight show for a long time. David Letterman on his late night show on cbs beat the tonight show on nbc. This is the best news everyone has heard for a long time!
Conan’s finally starting to look like his old self out there (maybe having Leno in front of him actually makes him feel more confident?), so I wouldn’t be surprised if he narrows that gap in total viewers a bit over the next couple of weeks. That being said, I wouldn’t bet money either way on who’ll be leading in overall viewers in two months.
Time will show that Letterman is one of the most accomplished, culturally-relevant talk show hosts of all time. No disrespect to the others, but Letterman is in a class of his own. Unfortunately this does not translate into how advertisers view the relevance of his show. I think they have a skewed idea of demographics and their impact on sales. Rating letterman’s quality through that lens is a sad reflection on how we currently are as a society.
Truly, David Letterman’s Late Show is late night television at its finest. All of the current slew of late night talk show hosts are all, to some degree, cheap imitations of Dave, the REAL DEAL. Although Leno’s Tonight Show did beat the Late Show in the ratings for well over a decade, that, in my opinion, was more of a result of the storied franchise/brand “The Tonight Show” which always ways, and until recently has always been, THE STANDARD all other chat fests have been measured against. That seems to be changing with the lackluster and ever-declining overall viewership of the TTS with Conan O’Brien at the helm. I believe that Tonight will continue to exist in the world of late night television regardless of WHO the host might be, but Conan’s version has indeed damaged the reputation and “institution-status” of The Tonight Show. As many posters have expressed on other threads, Letterman’s Late Show most closely resembles the Tonight Show that people have come to know, love, and find comfort in as they turn in at the end of a long day. I like Conan O’Brien and as his comedy matures (if it ever does) and if he realizes that the Tonight Show’s success has always been more about the format (popularized by the unimitable Johhny Carson) rather than the host’s attention-seeking antics, perhaps more viewers will find the Conan-flavored TTS more palatable. However, for the foreseeable future, Dave will be TOP DOG in late night talk/variety programming. Regardless of what the demos say now or what they said when Letterman was going head-to-head with Leno, David Letterman is, and since Carson’s retirement, always has been the REAL heir to Carson as “King of Late Night Television.” The documented fact that Letterman was Carson’s personal choice as his successor on Tonight, given that Carson’s only post-retirement late-night appearances were on Dave’s Late Show, and knowing that Carson continued to write material for Dave to use on-air in his monologues up until his death is evidence enough for me that King Carson handed off his crown to the only chat-host deserving to fill the void that Johnny’s departure left in the late night genre. And as far as how Jay Leno’s 10 PM “variety show” will affect the other late night players, I see it having little or no effect on the Late Show with David Letterman, but if I were NBC, Conan O’Brien, and “the powers-that-be” I would be extremely concerned. Clearly, when it comes to NBC talk shows, viewers preferred Jay Leno by an approximate two-to-one margin, as Leno’s total TTS average viewership versus that of Conan bears out. Now that Jay is on an hour and a half before Conan, I can only foresee further ratings erosion in the near future for O’Brien’s Tonight Show as most NBC late night viewers see this late night shuffle as nothing more than a way for them to catch their preferred Tonight Show (aka “The Jay Leno Show” 90 minutes earlier and get to bed earlier. Surely by now, the execs at NBC must be scratching their heads and asking themselves “What the heck were we thinking?”, much like the general public has been doing since Leno’s “retirement” and Conan’s “ascension” were announced in 2004.