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I’m told that on tonight’s Late Late Show (which taped Thursday night), host Craig Ferguson takes the piss out of NBC’s press release yesterday declaring Conan the “King of Late Night”. Also, Letterman beat O’Brien again last night in the overnights: 3.5 to 3.0. That’s a healthy margin no matter what the key demos show.
As for Ferguson, during his 2-minute opener, he said from behind the camera: “Ladies and gentleman….The King of Late Night TV,” then jumped in front of the camera. ”That’s right, I am the new King of Late Night TV. I can hear what you are saying, ‘Craig many, many, people get more viewers than you, lots of people in late night, nearly everyone in late night, gets more viewers than you — how can you be the King of Late Night?’ Cause I have a plan! I put out a press release saying I was the new King Of Late Night. What constitutes royalty in late night television? Saying you are! And as your king I demand you disrobe.”
- Conan Gives NBC Big Lead In Adult Demos
- David Letterman Tops Conan O’Brien In Last Night’s Ratings
- NBC Edicts Already Killing Jay Leno Show By Favoring Conan
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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CRAIG FERGUSON IS THE KING OF LATE NIGHT. He is the funniest late night host and his comments above prove it. If you haven’t caught his show after Letterman, you have no idea what you are missing.
Must be all those misogynist statutory rapists tuning in to see their hero Dave demean some more women and validate their sexual attraction to 14 year old girls. I bet Dave wins that demographic for a while (or at least until Jimmy Kimmel decides to reclaim it).
He’s got the healthiest attitude in television.
Everything about Craig Ferguson is a class act. He is so consistantly funny. Proof that America still attracts the best and the brightest from across the world.
I wonder how much Letterman’s latest ratings have to do with the whole latest Palin scandal. Once the hubbub dies down, will Dave’s ratings, too?
I love craig ferguson, he is just hilarious!
Lettermen and his precious ego had to be fellated. Doesn’t surprise his b!tch Craig would lead the rush.
The Cable news cycle is feeding some of this. Either way Letterman will return to his sh!tty old schtick and end up being third behind both Leno and Conan in the fall.
In the end I think Conan will prevail. It took me a little while to be converted fter he first came on the Late Show or whatever it’s called. But I came to realize that he was edgy and funny and very creative without being really nasty to people. There’s a real talent to that.
Jay’s audience was more middle of the road and older. I was never a Leno fan. But the audiences of both Dave and Conan are also getting older. Conan started 17 years ago. As much as I used to love Dave at some point he just started to become nasty. That can be very funny at times but it isn’t always enough.
Anyway it is way too early to know what the outcome will be in the talk show wars.
Affiliates getting nervous right about….. now.
You have got to love Craig Ferguson, he is so funny I really hope he gets bumped up to the “Late Show” when Letterman retires
Craig makes a valid point, it was pretty silly for NBC to proclaim Conan the “King of Late Night” in their press release. However, I don’t find his reaction all that funny, or flattering for that matter. It’s not like Conan is running around calling himself “King of Late Night”, it was a bunch of PR flacks at NBC.
Stunts like this one and Letterman’s contrived controversy with Sarah Palin are desperate attempts to distract from the reality of their situation. Letterman has been #2 for the last decade, but Conan has been coming out on top for most of the last two weeks. Ferguson has been losing to Fallon almost every night, save two or three nights in the last three months. That’s a desperate situation, one neither host expected, and we’re seeing the desperate retaliation.
One other thing, can we knock off the talk about one host being funnier than another? Seriously, the way it’s thrown about almost makes it seem like some kind of metric which can be objectively ascertained. Being funny is a personal opinion, nothing more. It wouldn’t seem like something needing to be said, but unfortunately so many people are so consumed with their own opinions they begin to believe it’s a concrete fact that everyone else must accept.
Sandra Bullock on Dave tonight. Yay!
Conan rarely has female guests, other than that insipid Paltrow. Some girl must’ve given him cooties in kindergarten or something.
Conan has no female writers. Letterman has no female writers. They should be ashamed of themselves.
For the love of god Gloria Steinem, get off you’re soapbox.You sound even more pathetic than Sarah Palin trying to used Letterman joke as a political tool to make her look presidential.As for 51% and Watching for Sandra.Watching For Sandra “Conan rarely has females guest” statement is complete bullshit.As for Conan and Letterman not having females writers, so what? Instead of going around searching for comedic shows that don’t have female writers, then using the percentage of the American female population as your name, you might want to check the male to female ratio of comedian/comedy writers, than rethink why there aren’t any female writers for late night shows.
Conan’s audience is too frat boy juvenile for female writers and Dave just doesn’t like women.
Is CRAIG FERGUSON starting to resemble LES MOONVES ?
Look at the picture that Nikki posted of Craig– he’s starting to look a bit like Les to me.
Hey “Redmenace”
You should check for polyps while your head is so far up your a–.
Classic example of an illiterate babbling Conan fan.
I miss Jay Leno, Conan Obrien does not belong in the Tonight Show helm, if Jay had to be replaced “which he did not” then they should have given the show to Craig Ferguson , a brilliant funny Scottsman that came to America and has made us all laugh for it!
“51%”
Right on! This is one contributory factor to these shows being such stagnant echo chambers. They unapologetically exist to appeal to the beer guzzling male doofus demographic. Have fun as your audience erodes, gentlemen. Fighting over the same small sliver of pie and missing the big picture.
When the networks realize they missed the boat, they’ll have to work twice as hard to change viewing habits and win back the female demographic. Please don’t do bits about weddings and babies and dieting when that time comes.
How these de facto shut-outs of women are legal is curious. Maybe that’s why they stick some females on the production staff – to get around a discrimination lawsuit without women having any genuine influence.
Meanwhile, the shows stink. LOL.
gaga girl: As if! Moonves wishes he had the appeal of Craig Ferguson.
Craig’s opener was on-target, brilliant, and funny. (Remember funny?) And it had to be satisfying to cover his boss Dave’s back like that. NO ONE else on TV could have pulled off that multi-dimensional cold opener.
Hey 51%, Dave doers have female writers. One of them is always doing comedy bits with him by pretending to be his wife from time to time and is in the audience when they do that fake audience question routine. She is an older woman who looks matronly and has been with Dave for several years. He also has a female producer, executive producer to be exact and that is Barbara Gaines who has also been with the show since he was at NBC so stop the soap box rant trying to find something wrong when there isn’t. The dumb joke he said was just that. It had no political agenda until Palin made it so and decided to twist the meaning and use it to her benefit like the Republican politician that she is when she was pimping for John McCain and making scurrilous accusations and made up tales about Obama and refused to quail the hate speech at her campaign rallies with her supporters who were advocating killing Obama and she and her husband Todd were the ones who had their daughter’s boyfriend move in under their roof where he proceeded to ploy the then 16 year old until she got pregnant so where is the outrage then from her then? It is okay for Levi to hump her daughter and then trout her out to the public so the world can know that you have an unwed teenage daughter and a reluctant baby daddy who looks like he’s headed to a gunshot wedding. Shine the mirror back on yourself, Sarah Palin.
In defense of Dave, he dated Merrill Markoe who was the head writer on Late Night, back in the day, and invented Stupid Pet Tricks. As a female writer, we’re 16% of working writers today — don’t blame late night alone, blame Hollywood.
Letterman doesn’t seem to realize how creepy he is, when he makes sexual references about children.
The other night, even Lauren Conrad looked very uncomfortable, when Letterman brought up, wanting to see some phony sex video, that she was supposed to be in. The look on her face was…Yuck, you’re old .
A man has got to know his limitations.
I disagree. I’m female, last I checked, and I love Conan. Actually, I love Conan and Craig. Now that they’re on different hours, I’m in heaven.
I see them both as similar, really. Wacky, witty, intelligent, and self-deprecating. They actually listen to their guests and play off what they say. With either of them, the interview can go anywhere. To me they’re much more enjoyable than Letterman or Leno. Kimmel is a bit too juvenile and boy-centric most of the time, but he comes up with some good stuff on occasion.
Letterman hates women? Au contraire. He’s equally insensitive to both genders — as Kathleen said, occasionally that’s funny, but more often it’s not.
Kimmel’s head writer is a female and it’s by far the worst of the late night shows in both ratings and in originality. It really is just awful in every way, unless you count the bands.
Maybe late night shows just aren’t were the ladies creatively excel? Do they have to be equal in everything?