Colbert wins late night show battle in US (again).
The Late Show beats the competition for a 5th year running.
- Published by David Knox
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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has won the battle of late night shows in the US for the 5th consecutive year.
Deadline reports Colbert comfortably won the spot for the 2020-21 television season with a total average of 2.95 million viewers in Live+7 ratings.
But for the first time in its 18-year history, Jimmy Kimmel Live! beat The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon in total viewers at 1.75m and 1.54m, respectively.
Meanwhile Seth Meyers’ Late Night averaged 1.01m viewers ahead of James Corden’s The Late Late Show averaging 971,000. The gap between these two shows on linear television is also closing.
Deadline notes the late-night ecosystem has changed a lot over the past 20 years and the battle for linear eyeballs is not as pronounced as it was, particularly under Jay Leno and David Letterman, but there is still healthy competition in their 11:30 pm slots.
5 Responses
In the US, those talk shows are at 11.35pm and 12.35am respectively, so those numbers are still pretty good for the timeslots.
I’m sure Colbert rates okay-ish for Ten for our small market, with Corden over on Peach. Otherwise, they’d be pulled off our screens. lol.
What about the late-night cable shows? (Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Greg Gutfeld etc)
Very small ‘niche’ audiences by comparison.
Yay, Stevie C!
I’ve loved Colbert all the way back to being a correspondent on the Daily Show. I watch the Late Show every morning while having breakfast. He’s done well to keep building his lead. I remember in the early days there was rumour of swapping his slot with James Corden.