David Letterman’s Return To ‘The Late Show’ Bolsters Stephen Colbert’s Ratings As Late-Night Shows Duke It Out Over Viewing Figures

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert continues to bring in the numbers, helped last week by David Letterman’s first return to the show since he stepped down.

Last week, the CBS late-night show also posted its best week of ratings since the first week out of the writers strike and, on Monday, Letterman’s appearance helped the show post its largest number of the season.

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While it’s a far cry from the classic days of the late-night wars when Letterman and Jay Leno were battling it out for supremacy, the attention being paid to linear ratings in the late-night space comes at an interesting time.

Late-night, in general, is continuing to face challenges on linear as viewers continue to pivot to digital platforms such as YouTube and then there’s budget talk. One source said that the increased ratings attention comes as all of these shows’ budgets are being looked at – look at how The Late Late Show with James Corden is being replaced by After Midnight after its budget was set to be cut when the Gavin & Stacey co-creator revealed he was leaving.

Having said that, moments such as Letterman’s return can still pull in viewers. Monday night’s episode posted 2.18M viewers, the show’s largest live+same day delivery since the writers strike ended. It is also the highest viewer average for any night since April when Lin-Manuel Miranda and John Kander appeared and is the show’s largest Monday audience since March with guests Christina Ricci and Jen Psaki.

The Letterman numbers come as The Late Show delivered an average of 2.57M viewers with live+three day viewing, per Nielsen. For the week ending November 17, The Late Show beat Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which averaged 1.63M and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which averaged 1.32M.

Adding 740,000 viewers with delayed viewing from the 1.83M live number, this was The Late Show’s best weekly three-day audience and best weekly three-day playback since October when the strike ended.

The other two shows, however, are continuing to fight it out in the 18-49 demo.

In the demo, Kimmel won or tied for top for six weeks straight. The week of November 6, Kimmel delivered a 0.15 rating among adults 18-49, which tied it for No. 1 with The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, according to Live + Same Day Nielsen data.

However, The Tonight Show narrowly beat Kimmel in the demo last week – 0.167 vs. 0.165 and 0.12 for Colbert. The NBC show also clearly has its sights on the digital market with significantly more subscribers across social media and a focus on celebrity videos going viral. For instance, per Listenfirst, The Tonight Show brought in over 27.8M views on its YouTube page for the week of November 6, compared to 3.71M views across The Late Show and JKL’s YouTube (although admittedly the former was on a break).

Kimmel did also post his most-watched season premiere in six years once the writers strike ended, recording 2.27M total viewers, higher than Colbert and Fallon, helped by Monday Night Football on the east coast.

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