Late night ratings report: Stephen Colbert holds edge over Jimmy Fallon
By Matt Moore
With November drawing to a close, the late night ratings show that the Late Show has maintained a lead over The Tonight Show.
The way in which television show are consumed these days certainly has changed. Watching online or recording shows have become the norm and such practices have an impact on ratings. Late night is particularly affected by this trend. It informs how shows like The Tonight Show, The Late Show, and Late Night design and deliver their content.
But much like it was in the pre-viral days, things in late night still revolve around NBC and CBS. Just as Jay Leno and David Letterman were constantly pitted against each other, so too have successors Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert become the main head-to-head matchup.
Unlike Leno and Letterman, Fallon and Colbert seem to have a much more friendly relationship. They’ve collaborated on bits and visited each other’s shows on multiple occasions over the years. It seems like they are content to let everyone else worry about who is beating who in the ratings.
With that being said, it is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that is atop the late night rankings. Numbers from just earlier this month show that Colbert drew an average of 3.57 million viewers compared to Fallon’s 2.08. In third place was Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Colbert’s lead comes despite Fallon getting a huge bump on Thanksgiving from NBC’s football coverage. Having Jerry Seinfeld as a guest didn’t hurt either as The Tonight Show had its highest ratings in two years.
The Late Show benefited from special live programming revolving around the midterm elections. Colbert is the go-to late night host for all things political so it was already shaping up to be a big month for the CBS show. NBC had made efforts to respond by hiring a new showrunner for Fallon with experience in news and primetime event coverage.
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Jimmy Fallon continues to hold a lead over Stephen Colbert when it comes to the 18-to-49 age demographics. This makes advertisers happy and it certainly plays into how the show does online. For now, it seems like the success of Fallon’s clips relies on the star-power of the guest while Colbert is able to hit his mark based on the day’s headlines. We’ll see what December holds for them both.