A new look at the late-night ratings race
It's been years since people paid much attention to the ratings competition between Jay Leno, David Letterman and ABC's "Nightline" (above: co-anchors Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir). That's because there really hasn't been much competition for more than a decade. NBC has ruled the roost since 1995, when Leno reclaimed the No. 1 spot from his CBS rival.
But now, with big changes only a few months in the offing, those rivalries are taking on new importance. In May 2009 Leno will sign off as host of "The Tonight Show" and Conan O'Brien will take his place, and Jimmy Fallon will take O'Brien's place (though he will actually sign on a few weeks/months earlier at NBC.com). Leno may return eventually -- though as I reported this summer, it won't be for a while -- so for the rest of 2009 all eyes will be on the race between O'Brien and Letterman and "Nightline" 2.0, which has seen its audience get considerably younger since Ted Koppel's departure.
The problem is that we've been using an imperfect measuring-stick to compare Leno and Letterman to the half-hour "Nightline." ABC publicity has been promoting its ratings "wins" over CBS and even NBC, but it's been hard to know what to make of those reports, since "Nightline" is only 30 minutes long. Common sense says, and research confirms, that every half hour that passes in late night means another few million people shut off the TV and go to bed. So there's something inherently biased about comparing a program that ends at 12:05 a.m. to one that ends at 12:35 a.m., since the hourlong show's rating is more greatly impacted by viewer attrition.
That's why, a few weeks ago, I asked NBC research ace Tom Bierbaum to track the half-hour ratings of all the late-night TV shows. My timing was fortuitous because we were entering the fall season, when shows were less likely to take vacation and we could thus construct a true apples-to-apples comparison: NBC, CBS and ABC with original late-night programs airing (with few exceptions) after their late news.
Here's what the numbers show:
11:30 PM-12 MID (r) = show was in repeats that week
HH 18-49 18-34 25-54 Total
RTG RTG RTG RTG Viewers
10/13-19/2008
TONIGHT NBC 3.7 1.4 1.2 1.8 5,414,000
LETTERMAN CBS 3.2 1.2 0.9 1.6 4,479,000
NIGHTLINE ABC 2.6 1.0 0.7 1.3 3,642,000
COLBERT COM -- 0.7 -- -- 1,400,000
10/6-12/2008
TONIGHT NBC 3.6 1.4 1.1 1.7 5,258,000
LETTERMAN CBS 2.9 1.3 0.8 1.5 4,059,000
NIGHTLINE ABC 2.7 1.0 0.5 1.3 3,630,000
COLBERT COM -- 0.7 -- -- 1,500,000
9/29-10/5/08
TONIGHT NBC 3.7 1.4 1.1 1.7 5,303,000
LETTERMAN CBS 2.8 1.2 0.8 1.5 3,944,000
NIGHTLINE ABC 2.7 1.1 0.6 1.4 3,701,000
COLBERT COM -- 0.7 -- -- 1,400,000
9/15-21/2008
TONIGHT NBC 3.7 1.4 1.0 1.8 5,199,000
LETTERMAN CBS 2.2 0.9 0.5 1.1 2,945,000 (r)
NIGHTLINE ABC 2.4 0.9 0.6 1.2 3,225,000
COLBERT COM -- 0.7 -- -- 1,400,000
9/8-14/2008
TONIGHT NBC 3.7 1.4 1.0 1.9 5,278,000
LETTERMAN CBS 2.6 1.0 0.6 1.2 3,626,000
NIGHTLINE ABC 2.7 1.1 0.7 1.4 3,843,000
COLBERT COM -- 0.3 -- -- 700,000 (r)
My thoughts about this data:
Letterman is facing a serious threat from "Nightline." ABC press releases, unfortunately, continue to mislead critics by measuring "Nightline's" 30-minute audience average against the other shows' 60-minute average. And this week, they trumpeted overnight "wins" over NBC while burying the fact that Leno was in repeats. But there's no denying that ABC is breathing down the neck of CBS. And it's not just in total audience: With its livelier mix of stories and younger anchors and reporters, "Nightline" is often competitive with Letterman in attracting viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, 18 and 49 and even 18 to 34. Not bad at all for a news program.
NBC is right to be nervous about losing Leno. We'll look at the late-late numbers in a later post. For now, though, there's no disputing Jay Leno's dominance in late night. He is soaring far beyond his 2007-08 season averages this fall, and he continues to pull the younger viewers in television into his big tent. For comparison's sake, I added "The Colbert Report" to these rankings just so you could see that "Tonight" pulls in twice as many 18-to-49-year-old viewers as the much more widely-hyped Colbert. (Yes, NBC has wider reach than Comedy Central, but not 100 percent wider reach. There are about 114 million households with TV in the United States, presumably all of which can get NBC, while Comedy is in 95 million homes.) The $40 million question is: How much of "Tonight Show's" success is because of the NBC network? And how much of that is because of Jay? NBC is about to find out.
Why should we assume Letterman will benefit from Leno's departure? I think the case could be made that "Nightline" -- which has undergo a complete overhaul and has the flexibility to cover breaking news and is never in repeats -- will pull in a number of viewers that swear to me that they will never, ever watch Conan O'Brien. I'm not sure those viewers will do ABC any good with advertisers, since I think Conan is a generational preference and that mostly older viewers will abandon him. But if ABC nets even 250,000 viewers from NBC post-Leno, that would propel "Nightline" into second place over Letterman in the psychologically important measurement of total viewers. I'm unpersuaded that those Leno diehards would flock to Dave's show; my guess is that if "Nightline" isn't to their liking, they'll just turn in early.
