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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. I am also extremely disapointed that the Comedy channel droped all the Late Shows. I only kept my subscription up to watch Letterman, Leno, Connan and Fallon. As it is I will be cancelling my subscription to Austar alltogether.

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