Colbert shakes up late-night race, but Fallon is still at top
Stephen Colbert has brought CBS a larger (and younger) audience than David Letterman, but the new Late Show host still is second banana to NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
With four weeks of ratings counted since Colbert’s debut Sept. 8, he’s averaging 3.9 million viewers, a big 58% gain from Letterman’s first four weeks last fall, and has more than doubled Dave’s audience among adults ages 18 to 49, the sweet spot for advertisers.
Fallon remains ahead, if slightly, with 4 million viewers (down from 4.2 million last fall) and has a 21% advantage among young adults, with 1.5 million to Colbert’s 1.2 million. But both shows are tied among the youngest adults, ages 18 to 34, among whom Colbert has grown nearly threefold over Letterman.
Although Colbert is well off the 6.6 million who tuned in for his premiere, “we could not be more pleased with the way the show’s doing,” says CBS research chief David Poltrack, adding that 39 million viewers have watched at least one episode. The net- work’s research reveals that viewers perceive it as a funny, “thinking person’s show, which is what the goal was. And it’s distinctive in that regard” compared with other late-night shows.
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live appears to have suffered from Colbert’s new rivalry. Kimmel’s audience is down 9% to 2.3 million viewers, a distant third place, and has fallen 15% among adults, to 667,000 — less than half of Fallon’s total. And both ESPN and Adult Swim, among the most popular networks for the youngest adults, also are down this fall. Despite Colbert’s gains, Late
Show remains the oldest-skewing late-night show: Its viewers’ median age is 58 (down from 60.4 for Letterman), compared with 57.3 for Kimmel and 54.3 for Fallon.
In the 12:35 a.m. ET/PT slot, NBC’s Seth Meyers and CBS’ James Corden have gained
ground from last fall: Meyers’
Late Night gained a slight 2%, to 1.7 million viewers (and bested Kimmel among young adults, though it airs an hour later), while Corden’s Late Late Show averaged 1.4 million up 5% from predecessor Craig Ferguson’s four-week average.
Over on cable, Comedy Central has suffered without Colbert and Jon Stewart. The first two weeks of The Daily Show With Trevor
Noah claimed an average of 942,000 same-day viewers, down from 1.5 million for the equivalent weeks with Jon Stewart last September. Noah’s audience among adults 18 to 49 fell 43%.
Though the median age of Noah’s viewers is 46.7, older than Stewart’s 43.1, Comedy Central president Michele Ganeless says she expects that adults 18-34, the core fan base of Noah, 31, is more likely to watch the show or its segments on other platforms.