Thursday, August 13, 2009

Late Night Ratings: "Late Show" reruns beat original "Tonight Shows" by a tiny margin

Talk Show News confidently stated last week that Conan would "beat Dave decisively in next week's ratings, since all-new 'Tonight Show's will be going up against Letterman reruns." I was wrong, as CBS was happy to report. "Late Show" repeats did indeed have a bigger audience than "Tonight," but only by a smidge.

"Late Show" "delivered a 2.1/06 in households with an average of 2.95m viewers beating first-run 'The Tonight Show' in households (vs. 2.0/05, +5%) and viewers (vs. 2.94m)," according to Nielsen ratings for the week ending Aug. 7. It was Letterman's fifth weekly consecutive win over "Tonight."

As they do every week, NBC ripostes by bragging about their more desirable demographics.

As for "Nightline," it beat both shows rather decisively, with an average of 3.3 million viewers per broadcast.

4 comments :

  1. Anonymous said...

    Conan has lost his bite, and he needs Hugh Grant to get caught with another hooker, stat!

    - Octobrain

  2. Santiago R. said...

    Man, this is a pleasant surprise for me. Re-runs beating original shows is just crazy to me, but leave it to Dave to pull it off. Tiny margin notwithstanding.

  3. George said...

    Did this ever happen? re-runs beating original shows?

  4. Talk Show News said...

    According to the New York Times, the last time Dave repeats beat Tonight originals in the ratings was 14 years ago. I suspect that during the last decade or so, Leno reruns may have beat Dave originals, but I don't have the stats at hand.