In Tuesday night's early metered market numbers Jay Leno and The Tonight Show bested David Letterman and Late Show 3.7/9 (household rating/share) to vs. 3.0/7. In the 25 markets with Local People Meters, Leno also won with adults 18-49, with a 1.4/6 vs. a 1.0/4 for Letterman.
Looks like things are starting to settle in with Leno winning. Probably not at the numbers he was doing before, but still beating Letterman.
That's still a loss of at least a million viewers right? I love jay leno, wish he would do better.
There is no info here for total viewers and no good way to project it accurately. If the 3.7 holds up that would be about 4.3 million homes, but in some homes more than one person watches. If it wound up averaging 1.25 people per household that would be around 5.3 million viewers.
Oh my, how can this be? Clearly Robert is fudging the numbers – because the coveted and precious 10pm lead-in was (once again) higher for CBS than for NBC….?
Mind boggling indeed….
I guess we'll have to wait for the press releases to see what the official final numbers are won't we? :/
I was checking the Directv “What's Hot” menu on the West Coast. For the Pacific Time Zone, Letterman was Number 1. However, on the “National” What's Hot, it was Glen Beck followed by Hair Restoration infocommecial on FX as number 2. Interesting. Not too much relevance, but ratings are pretty much a crapshoot business.
I'd say DirecTV's “what's hot”, which represents less than 20% of the population is the bigger crapshoot. If you were watching Justified on FX and then turned the TV off and went to bed without turning off your satellite box, you'd show up as watching the hair restoration commercial.
I never turn my set top box off, only the TV.
As it happens I did watch Justified and liked it. I usually turn off my DirecTV receiver in the living room but always keep the receiver on in my office. Letterman was number one on the East coast too.
Wow! And with Kimmel on Letterman, it's clear that the general public no longer cares about the late night situation.
Leno surprises me, I was expecting him to stabilize in a more or less close fight with Letterman, but he's actually up vs last week, and with weaker lead-in.
Remember the good old days of a month or so ago when every Leno/Conan article got at least 200 comments? Those were the days…
@go0g3n Those days are gone as Leno is continuing to win with weak 10pm “lead-ins” and Letterman continuing to lose with strong 10pm lead-ins. And with Team Coco's fervent and sure predictions that Jay would fail in his return to late night, having evaporated into thin air, with “wait til next week” not manifesting for them; they have nothing to say.
opps, duplicat comment…
While it's true that Conan fans have lost, they will still try to turn anything positive about Leno into something bad.
Leno loses to Dave: See, I told you nobody would watch that guy anymore.
Leno wins: The majority of TV viewers are uneducated and unfunny.
Good Karma for Jay Leno, just a lesson for the people that don't know the facts, Conan 5 years ago demanded The Tonight Show or he was going elsewhere even though Leno was leading in the ratings. Now enough of the poor CO-CO peeps. Letterman's following was just a glitch because of the trouble he was in. NBC jump the gun by dumping Conan so fast, he would have been number 1 by now.
Just shows you that the country does not want to listen to bitterness.
I was so completely wrong that Jay would have a ratings setback early this week. He's still due for one, I think. But then, I bet people were saying that about him for 14 straight years. I'm in awe of his resilience.
I don't like Leno, like O'Brien but not as a talk show host.He's better as a creator and writer. But it was stupid for NBC to make the change and IMO more stupid to bring Leno back but I never had any doubt once they did, he'd be back in the lead. What I think will be interesting to see is if Nighttime audiences continue to dropoff as Daytime and Primetime broadcast network viewers have.
“was stupid for NBC to make the change and IMO more stupid to bring Leno back but I never had any doubt once they did, he'd be back in the lead.”
I find that a fascinating comment. Not sure how it's stupid to regain first place. I don't mean that facetiously, I think you have a rationale. Curious what it is.
Regarding your suggestion that Conan maybe was better behind the scenes- which I agree with- I think this whole upheaval has actually helped Conan's future as a host tremendously. It gave him a narrative and a kind of emotional connection with his audience and an underdog appeal that was missing before.
Who is releasing these numbers? Is it from a NBC press release?
Dear Mr. Seidman: HOW do Leno's numbers THIS YEAR compare to his (own) NUMBERS at this time LAST YEAR?
How do Nightline's numbers — and Letterman's numbers compare THIS YEAR to their (*own) numbers LAST YEAR?
Thank you.
It's Nielsen data. The metered markets I got from one source, though ultimately saw them again, with the local people meter data from NBC. NBC is much, much better about releasing overnight data than ABC or CBS.
That was true even when Jay was getting the snot slapped out of him at 10pm and Conan was getting beaten by Dave at 11:35p. Even then, NBC was always very proactive in providing regular data. CBS and ABC provide only the weekly snapshots typically.