We're now nine weeks into the disappearance of Conan's Tonight Show adults 18-49 lead over Letterman's Late Show and the two shows are still neck and neck in the 18-49 demo. Since late September/ early October, the shows have had exactly the same overall average (1.0) for adults 18-49 ratings.
This is close to looking like a permanent sea change. Not quite as dramatic as when Leno took the late night ratings lead from Letterman in the mid 90's and never gave it back, particularly because Letterman's unlikely to stay in his chair past 2012 when he'll be 65 and is rumored to be retiring, but a big change nevertheless.
The trend lines above are 4 week moving averages.
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Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Wow. That is amazing given Dave’s age and how NBC crowed about Conan’s “youth” appeal. It would appear that Coco is not sampling well with a broad based audience demographic and that perhaps some tweak and (tweets) are to be administered.
Bring Leno back. For good.
Leno? Ugh no thanks.
As much of a ham as Leno is, I hate to say it, but he was the most watchable of the three late nite hosts. His jokes are almost never funny, but he’s the best late night interviewer on TV aside from Craig Ferguson, and, his show was just more watchable. Nothing brilliant, not usually funny, but comfort food.
Dave is the next best but he’s even more predictable than Jay, is less friendly with guests, has even less funny skits, and his personality just gets to me once in a while (not often, but sometimes).
Conan is the worst. The comedy bits are always the same stale three things, and he actually seems terrified by guests. He plows through interviews like he’s reading from a script and dying to have it over with.
9 weeks into Conan’s lead evaporating – that’s about the same length of time since Leno returned. Eventually, hopefully, Gaspin will undo this cluster-bleep of Silverman’s and let Conan succeed. I don’t think there’s anything long term to read into this, it’s just Conan being hobbled in the short term by silly network decisions.
Ummm…is everybody looking at the same chart as I am? It looked like Dave had the lead for a while, but it looks like Conan has caught back up to him and has now surpassed him again.
The chart is misleading in a way, Master Moron. It’s a trend chart, and further more is going on 18-49 rating points instead of overall 18-49 viewers. For at least the past two weeks (possibly further, I don’t remember and don’t care enough to check) Dave has beat Conan in 18-49 by ~50,000-100,000 viewers. A minuscule amount to be sure, but a loss is a loss when you were expected to dominate that demographic.