On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:18 AM, Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm curious as to what O'brien's figures are. I've been watching him > this last week with Dave dark. The comedy is better than I expected. > He does good monologues and I like the prepared bits. The interviews, > though, are deathly dull.
This is a big part of the so-called "Leno Effect", and may be the single biggest negative impact on NBC's bottom line to result from the Leno Experiment. TV By The Numbers posts the various press releases about the late night ratings - here are the ones for the November Sweeps period: http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings/late-night Basically, Dave had his best November Sweeps since 1994. He beat Conan in total viewers by 74% (4.08M to 2.35M), beat him in adults age 25-54 by 30%, and tied him in adults aged 18-49. Conan is beating Dave in Adults aged 18-34 by 47%. The media age of Conan's audience was 46.4, 10 years younger than Dave's at 56.3 (which, somewhat surprisingly, is the same age as Nightline's audience). NBC reports that the average age of Conan's Tonight Show audience is actually younger than the age of his audience last year when he was at Late Night at 12:30. Fallon's audience is only 2 year's ounger than Conan's is now (44.7). This is a huge turnaround from when Leno was at the Tonight Show of course, when he regularly spanked Dave (I think getting close to 5M total viewers a night, not much less that Leno is getting now in primetime). My TiVo records both Dave and Conan, and I have been watching about 50-60% of the Tonight Show episodes before deleting them. In general I agree with you evaluation - his monologue is regularly much sharper and more biting than Dave's or, or course, (based on what I have seen this year and remember from the past) Leno's. His clunker jokes are worse than Dave's, but that is because his jokes in general are more ambitious. I find the prepared comedy bits to be more hit and miss (e.g. the thing with the Universal Tour bus stopping by is lame, but the thing with the Tom Cruise wax dolls is funny, and the Conando bits are funny, as are the Twitter Trackers). Conan remains the absolutely worst interviewer in late night television - and I include both Leno (who I think is also quite bad) and even Fallon (who, I hate to say it, has gotten less bad at several parts of his show if the random pieces that I have seen over the last couple of seeks are a good sample). This is not all the fault of the Leno's anemic lead-in of course - at least part of Dave's surge has resulted from curiosity viewers after his sex scandal, and CBS is kicking ass in primetime ratings across the board, the better to promo Dave. But the bottom line is that by moving Leno to primetime NBC has turned late night from a dominant profit center to one where they are are in second place with about half of their previous total audience. From their POV I guess that is unfair - the better comparison maybe is what would either Leno or Conan's Tonight Show ratings be if either Leno or Conan also had an 11:30 show on ABC or Fox? -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
