Last night Conan and The Tonight Show averaged a 2.0 adults 18-49 rating in the 25 local People Meter markets. Letterman's Late Show averaged a 1.1 rating with adults 18-49, and The Jay Leno Show at 10pm averaged a 1.2 rating with adults 18-49.
Conan Going Out Like a Lion - Crushes Letterman and Leno on Wednesday
Categories: Late Night TV Ratings
ironyy
I knew Conan would break a 2.0 anyday. Ratings are going to be horrible when Leno returns to late night.
So the highest rating on NBC last night was for late night…Mercy had 1.4, SVU had 1.7 and Leno had 1.2
Petrie, indeed.
let’s hope Leno pulls a .4 average when he returns
Leno’s ratings sucked for _primetime_, but isn’t he getting about the same viewership he had at 11:30? His viewers will most likely follow him back to 11:30 and he’ll get a spike on return with people being curious as to what he will say/do.
BrandonK, Leno averaged a 1.4/1.5 adults 18-49 rating his last season on the Tonight Show.
I’m glad to see Conan going out huge. Once the final episode airs…that’s it for me and the Tonight Show. I can’t believe that NBC fired Adam Sandler and Chris Farley….apparently firing great talent is NBC’s thing. Oh well….DOWN WITH NBC!!!
To the loud people who hope Leno fails on return, what would you like NBC to do? Get rid of Leno and then replace him with who?
Letterman for the Tonight Show!!! Start campaigning now. get him the job he deserved all those years ago….
just kidding….but the campaign would be funny….
Bill do you know how Leno trended on TTS for the last 2 years before he stepped down? Were his ratings trending down like the rest of broadcast television has been?
jo, sadly, I don’t have a good handle on Leno’s long term Tonight Show ratings numbers. Until recently, nobody cared!
jo, The NYTimes had an article recently that says:
“Ratings for “The Tonight Show” fell off a cliff the year before Mr. O’Brien took over in 2009, dropping to about 4.7 million viewers a night, from about 5.5 million, or 15 percent, in a single year, according to Nielsen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/business/media/18carr.html
Interesting that the NYTimes would call a 15% fall “off a cliff”, lots of broadcast primetime shows have lost that much on a season to season basis in the last few years, but I hadn’t noticed any similar language from them
Maybe they should have one of those fancy America got’s talent to find the new host to replace Leno. Now that’s real good TV. eh! And no Canadians.
Leno/Tonight Show averaged a 2.0 in the 2005-2006 season (Letterman averaged a 1.4 that season).
via TV Mo Joe:
It dipped 10 percent in ’06 – ’07 (1.8) and fell another 25 percent in ’07-’08 (1.4 in the season of the WGA strike). Demo viewership in 2008 was flat, but since that was vs. the strike year’s deflated averages, it wasn’t much of an accomplishment.
http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/late-night-big-drama-shrinking-audiences-13238
I think this may quite the people down who claim Conan is now damaged goods. This may even help bring more/better offers to the table for him. Will he bring a 2.0 average rating with him to his new home? No, but he’ll have an established base that should grow with time.
I wouldn’t jump on the concept that Leno will bomb. While people in large cities & celebrities are calling foul on all of this, Leno has always appealed to the blue collar, middle America, older demos. I think his show will be alright. I wish it WOULDN’T be, but I’m confident in the fact that the people angry over this are not Leno’s demos anyway.
@Bill – good to see some numbers thanks lurker.
So Leno’s numbers were 5.5 Million before his final year before the highly publicised Conan takeover of the show. There was a 15% drop (apparently “off a cliff” to some folks)down to 4.7 M as Leno made his exit.
Since EVERYONE seems to care about them now, what exactly where Conan’s viewer numbers for the past seven months, monthly averages would be great, do you have those ??
If Conan had put up these type of numbers in the fall, there would be no controversy and he would be staying on the Tonight Show.
“If Conan had put up these type of numbers in the fall, there would be no controversy and he would be staying on the Tonight Show.”
See I wonder if this is a debatable point. I think that if these were Conan’s ratings the whole time he still would have gotten ousted. It is cheaper for NBC to pay off Conan than Leno and obviously no matter what the Leno show had to go