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Leno’s numbers beat them both. . .
I should hope so – He’s on in prime time!! The fact that it isn’t a foregone conclusion that Leno wins every night is why they had to cancel his 10 o’clock ass
Leno’s show is in prime time and benefits from a direct lead-in. Anyone sees his beating two late-night shows’ numbers as a victory is really moving the goalposts. He should have been beating both vigorously all along, as any 10PM show would. If he doesn’t, that’s actually a failure of epic proportions.
Is that true? Conan at 11:30 has been beating Jay’s 10 numbers the last couple weeks, which is amazing. After all both have been getting massive publicity.
Get used to Conan beating Leno. Conan’s been getting great P.R. and Leno awful P.R. No mystery here. I really, truly think that at long last Americans have had their fill of Jay Leno.
Thanks for weighing in Mr. Zucker. Congrats to you and Dick on losing $200 million on the Winter Olympics. Really knocked that one outta the park.
Still can’t beat Letterman overall, even on his last week. Sad. Demo’s look good though.
I like Jay Leno. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a winner. Feels good to go to sleep too.
Thank you.
Barely. Leno had a 2.0 in the 18-49 demo when millions more people are watching TV.
But what was his share of the audience? 5?
He’s on an hour and a half earlier, his numbers should be at least double theirs.
Spoken like a true mouthbreathing apologist.
Clinical tests have shown that regularly watching Leno turns people into morons
“Leno’s numbers beat them both. . .”
..Only because it’s lead in was Biggest Loser.
After all is said and done, Leno isn’t funny, hasn’t been funny in a very long time, and won’t be funny anytime in the near future. He’s the definition of Bland.
On the other hand Conan has been on fire this week. Letterman’s take down of Leno’s “Don’t blame Conan” spiel was classic.
My personal favorite late night host is Craig Ferguson. I have no vested preference between Conan OR Letterman. But Leno is just a joke. He and Zucker both should be fired.
I agree Leno hasn’t been funny for years (except now, when both he and Conan have been funny). But Conan hasn’t been funny either, for years. Like it or not, Leno was #1 for 12 years including his last year with the Tonight Show.
Conan NEVER came CLOSE to Jay’s ratings. Not once, until this publicity (which is not sustainable btw).
NBC forced Jay to leave, when he was on top, and then threw money at him when he was a possible Fox or ABC hire. Thus the stupid 10 pm deal. NBC “magically” expected Conan O’Brien, who had 12 years of low ratings, where it did not matter, to “grow” and gain viewers. Without the margin of DECADES past when NBC was a leader in ratings, and could afford a year or two of low ratings on the Tonight Show.
Conan is getting canned because he can’t get the ratings. Period. If he had Jay’s numbers, let alone MORE, from last year on the Tonight Show, it would be Jay getting the buy-out.
Letterman’s take on Leno was only mildly amusing, and he’s become Jay’s favorite punchline of icky-old-man sex (replacing Clinton). Letterman should have shut up and let memories of him banging on-air interns fade.
Now he’s guaranteed Leno will make him a national joke.
Yes, Ferguson is the best. He’s a lot funnier than Jay Leno and has the same middle brow sensibility.
Let’s be honest. Letterman is old, and visibly bored by his job and his audience. His viewership is more tradition and institution (he’s been around so long) but that’s vulnerable to being made into a joke. Conan is your typical Harvard mafia guy, unable to reach a broad audience, hysterically funny 10% of the time (his funny jokes are home runs) but mostly boring and schtick laden, with Leno boring and formulaic until the last few weeks.
The Tonight Show is not really the place for either youth-oriented stuff (young people have other things to do), or “cool people” stuff, it’s middle America and middle of the road.
It was stupid to think Leno could pull numbers that made affiliates happy (Nikki IIRC called that last year) or that Conan could be successful on the Tonight Show. But having a mess NBC had to choose. They chose Jay Leno over Conan, despite Conan’s allies like Lorne Michaels. Its a simple ratings move.
You’re basically right, but one thing that has to be remembered is that NBC was always going to have to choose. They should have made the choice back in 2004, when Fox came in with the big offer to Conan. Either let Conan walk(logical and safe, because Leno was the ratings draw then as now) or keep Conan and let Jay jump ship(risky, but a higher potential reward since Conan’s audience is younger). Instead they avoided the decision, compounded the mistake by shuffling the guys to die in their time slots, allowed them to both look like failures, and then STILL tried to avoid making a decision with the “Jay for half an hour, Tonight Show bumped back past midnight” idea. They only finally made their choice when Conan forced their hand by refusing to bump back.
Now, instead of making a firm choice and standing behind it with a clear plan, NBC has damaged both guys who–despite any other flaws–had always done their best for the company. NBC’s such a joke right now that they deserve this, but I don’t think Leno or O’Brien did.
No, I’m sorry, you are wrong. Leno’s lead-in wasn’t the Biggest Loser.
That’s Conan O’Brien’s lead-in.
prime time ratings are typically higher than late night ratings overall so that’s a misleading statistic……………..
Leno did not beat them both. His numbers in the coveted demo are far below Conan’s. And, Leno airs during something caleld prime time, when there are MANY more eyeballs available.
You rock, Conan! NBC has to be looking at these ratings and thinking “We just fired the next Johnny Carson.” And I WAS a Leno fan until, oh, about 25 lies ago.
Trent, look at Leno’s rating from Tuesday night. He actually did beat Conan in the coveted demographic by .1, and was more than double in total viewers. However, the last few nights before, Conan was beating Leno in the demo.
If you want to look at the ratings fairly, look at them in 15 minute increments – people are tuning in to see Conan’s monologue during this period of time and then the viewership falls off drastically.
Meanwhile, even on Sirius, Howard Stern gets more listeners than any one of these bozos. Howard has been speaking the truth about Leno for YEARS. About time the rest of you catch up. Jay stabbed Letterman in the back, is so unoriginal all he can do is steal bits from Stern – including hiring his stuttering fool, and now we should be surprised at what is happening to Conan? Jay isn’t pushing Conan out; it is the network? That is the funniest thing Jay has ever said.
Lopez was talking some trash on Conan. Lopez sucks! How are the Lopez ratings doing in all of this?
Too bad these numbers are too late to mean a damn thing. Even if Conan lands with a competitor his momentum will have been killed by the time any new show could get on the air. Not that all these people who are late to the party would continue supporting Conan on a new network or even if NBC made a last second decision to keep him and punt Leno. They’re watching now because the ship is sinking and they want a front row seat to see it go down. Once it’s out of sight they’ll go back to their Family Guy re-runs and slowly forget there was ever anybody named Conan O’Brien.
Well, like I’ve been saying, Leno back at 11:30? I’ve had it with the Tonight Show. I’ve had it with Leno and NBC.
Can’t wait for Conan to be released and be invited by Letterman on ”Late Show”. What a show that will be.
NBC is sinking faster than the Titanic and has brought back to surface for me all the ill feelings and memories when Carson left in controversy when Leno was chosen over Letterman, who was Carson’s number one and only choice.
Wonder what Johnny is thinking of all this? I proudly ordered my ”Tonight Show with Conan O’brien” T-shirt on tonight show shop before they are discontinued. Would love to get my hand on an ”NBC – the peacock with the finger giving the bird” T-shirt.
The big bird to you NBC and Zucker. Zucker, you should be fired!!! Why don’t you go manage a bank or something!!!
This is no way to understand the ratings issue at all. Conan’s 18-49 demo win is to be expected, the HUT number is what’s more important because even with the drama of these events, Conan still doesn’t get a spike that means anything. His audience is who it is, was and always will be. Conan has a late night show for a younger audience, in college or starting their career’s and predominantly on the coasts… perfect for Fox and in no way a threat to Leno or the Tonight Show franchise. Leno and the Tonight Show historically, has been for the fly-over-states. Conan’s audience was never going to grow at 1130 and despite his premiere week, he proved it so. As for Leno, he’s just such a mediocre talent. The 10pm experiment failed because of precisely that and his “success” on the Tonight Show has more to do with a stagnant, older audience just sitting there watching television wishing that Carson were still alive interviewing Jack Benny and Dean Martin again. The fact that Zucker and Immelt were so pedestrian in their thinking 5 years ago and overvalued Conan’s audience is really the issue that no one is addressing. Yet Conan gets a 45 million dollar payout for failing and Jay gets his old show and a new deal for failing. Classic Hollywood fish bowl reality; once you’re in the club you’re in and Gavin and Ari and Rick get richer off of the back of failure while NBC’s stockholders absorb another debacle.
Conan has been SO funny this week. The bit with the car dressed as a mouse practically suffocated me.
The best thing about the fact that ratings are higher than normal this week is that Conan’s plugs for the Haiti relief effort may have more oomph.