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Comedy Channel: No reprieve for Letterman, Fallon & Leno

David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon and Jay Leno won't be returning to the Comedy Channel despite protests from subscribers.

The Comedy Channel has no plans to return late night US hosts David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon and Jay Leno to its schedule, despite some protests from angry subscribers.

The channel dropped the three hosts from its line-up at the end of June, replacing them with reruns of Saturday Night Live.

Foxtel claims the shows were not rating but declined to detail any figures. It also didn’t respond to questions about airing in different timeslots.

However TV Tonight has learned that the shows were indeed struggling to resonate.

The Late Show with David Letterman averaged 3,057 viewers across weeks 1-26 in 5 metro cities. Chelsea Lately on E! averaged 9,273. The latter show is another Tonight show airing in a similar timeslot on a channel with the same subscriber tier.

A Comedy Channel source told TV Tonight the shows are very expensive to acquire and it has opted to invest more in local productions, to be announced shortly. It is also awaiting Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show on TBS and would reassess its position later this year.

53 Responses

  1. David, Thanks very much for enquiring about everything including the possibility of Conan in Nov – Paul I agree, 10.00pm Conan, 10.45 Leno & 11.30 Fallon or even just Fallon and Conan would be great. I don’t plan on watching Comedy Channel ever again unless they bring back the late night shows. Please let sanity prevail.

  2. Invest in more local production ?? which means some new Australian 8 episode comedy that will end up on ABC1 anyway , compared to the 5 nights a week new Jay Leno , Fallon episodes all year round? Can you see the shorter end of the stick?
    Hope they lose a lot on their investment ,I hope its Comedy Channel’s biggest failure. I hate the channel.

  3. Well that’s a relief, I was trying to work out why the IQ2 had stopped recording The Tonight Show. Leno was the only reason we subscribed to The Comedy Channel. Yep, time to downgrade for us too.

  4. Since when are Foxtel concerned about ratings. We pay for these shows. So fringe shows and other series which dont get a run on free to air can be viewed and enjoyed

  5. Seems a bit strange that Foxtel should be concerned with ratings – thought it existed just to get cash out of subscribers??

    Mind you, Foxtel is nowhere near what it used to be about 10 years ago. Back then there were shows you really did want to pay to see unlike the dross on it now…..

  6. Isn’t part of the luxury of pay TV that it isn’t dictated by ratings?

    Also by only giving letterman figures, which is shown on FTA tv is being a bit dishonest.

    I have never ever heard of anyone anywhere ever mentioned the Chelsea Lately Show.
    Yet people do frequently talk about who they prefer from leno, conan, letterman ect. Just the other day it came up with a bunch of people.

    These shows are late night pop culture institutions and it’s just a shame we won’t get them.

  7. Very thankful for the further justification. Can understand it was a ratings against money of the rights etc especially for three shows. Will be interesting when the dealing are commenced and whether it will put on the table Conan’s show and give a offer of whether it would be worth getting George Lopez’s show as well it is getting moments repeated on free to air more and more.

  8. Well at the least there’s some hope of them showing Conan’s new TBS talk show as the show is on TBS not NBC so it should be cheaper to acquire the rights to plus in the US it’s only going to be on 4 nights a week (Mon to Thurs). If the comedy channel do get the rights to Conan which should rate very well, they should also bring back Jay Leno & Jimmy Fallon or perhaps jimmy kimmel instead of Fallon. From November the comedy channel line up should be – 10.00pm Conan, 10.45 Leno & 11.30 Fallon. Just a thought on why David Letterman was rating poorly maybe it was because the show is also on Channel 10 as well?

  9. I have no problem with this if they do get Conan’s show. The only good show they dropped was Letterman which is on Ten anyway. I would prefer Conan to be on a channel like Fox 8 though so it can be shown in HD.

  10. Well at least there is some hope on them showing Conan’s new TBS talk show which I think would rate very well. Maybe a reason why David Letterman was rating low, was because maybe he is also on Channel 10 as well? If the comedy channel get the rights to show Conan’s new show (which should be less expensive to acquire the rights to because it’s on TBS not NBC plus it’s only going to be on Mon – Thurs in the US not 5 nights a week) they should bring back Jay Leno & Jimmy Fallon as well & leave out Letterman because he’s ready on Ten.
    From November the comedy channel’s line up should be – 10pm Conan, 10.45 Leno & 11.30pm Fallon.

  11. Typical Foxtel being cheap. They only care about shoving as many ads down subscribers’ throats as much as possible and soakin up the profits. They’ve been dirt cheap enough already with all the el cheapo content they show. Now they’re going even further. They are the poorest of excuses for a Pay TV company

  12. One of the few reasons I even subscribe to anything else other than basic and sport was the Comedy channels commitment to the Late Night shows for such a long time.
    Upon hearing about this news, there is very little on Comedy i would even watch. Im not a huge fan of the 1 millionth rerun of Scrubs or South Park.
    Time to downgrade I think.

  13. Letterman is a bad example IMO as it’s on FTA and I’d bet most would have watched it there until TCC updated to 16×9 and better picture quality.

    I bet it has more to do with the cost v ratings rather than pure ratings, lets just hope that FTA can pick them up for their digital channels. And they wonder why people go else where to watch then. You can watch most of them on YouTube, Leno can be seen on the NBC site, and it’s not block for local viewers.

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