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Conan O’Brien’s First Night On TBS Beats Leno And Letterman

ratings
» 14 comments

Conan O’Brien is off to a huge start in the ratings for his new cable late night show, attracting more than 4.1 million viewers on his first night.

This was better than Jay Leno‘s Tonight Show on NBC – an amazing statistic, that would be made more amazing if it happens again.

According to the AP, O’Brien’s 4.1 million viewers topped Leno, who had 3.5 million viewers.

Compared to his new late night comedy competition, Conan demolished the Comedy Central tandem of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They had 1.3 and 1 million viewers.

Another area sure to excite TBS is the median age for Conan, which was an astounding 30 last night.

Obviously this massive number will drop off tonight, and as the weeks and months go by. But if Conan can sustain a ratings lead over the established Comedy Central shows, that would be impressive feat.

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  • Michéle

    While I don’t follow late night talk, it did manage to dominate the news cycle and it seemed Conan got the short end of the stick.

    I hope he is laughing to the bank, it seem’s he has dedicated fans, in the end isn’t that what should matter.

  • tatboy

    Is there really this many CoCo fans writting for Mediaite??? Are the usual readers here looking for this many CoCo posts?

  • Thelonious Funk

    I think it will be short lived. They are going after different audiences. But Conan has a lot of competition in the funny category. And Leno stands unchallenged in the completely unfunny category.

  • juan

    Kudos to Conan!

  • Arkansas Steve

    I DVRed both Jay & Conan. To me, they are both good, but not great.

    But I predict Conan will have big problems. After the lead-in & monologue, he wasn’t very funny. He is making some of the same mistakes he made on his Tonight Show such as moving left/right on the stage so much the camera has trouble following him. It’s hard on the eyes. And he does other things wrong also.

    Good luck to you Conan, but my prediction is a mediocre show. Conan’s lucky it is easy to survive on cable.

  • ROCKSTEADY

    Welcome back Conan.

  • http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

    To be fair, I believe that I read somewhere that Jon Stewart’s audience adds-up to around 4m, once you count all of the re-airings. Which would not only be a consideration when thinking about relative audience size, but the first re-airing of the Comedy Central block is just 90 minutes after Conan ends, so it’d be interesting to see if the ratings for that or any subsequent re-airings change.

    Of course, Conan also re-airs immediately after George Lopez, so maybe once the dust settles, a pattern will develop.

    As for myself, though I could watch Stewart in his first timeslot without any problems, I prefer to watch it online at my convenience and where I can watch the extended interviews without sitting through a rehash. I was kind of disappointed that there doesn’t appear to be full episodes of Conan available and because it’d be a good way to attract non-regular viewers to the TBS site, it kind of strikes me as a missed opportunity to promote their other shows.

    After all once I watch Conan, in addition to the sidebar ads, I might consider clicking around to see what else TBS may have available online.

  • Dave Richards

    These guys are all funny but no one will ever do late night like Carson did.

  • stoogedudes

    Magister said:
    To be fair, I believe that I read somewhere that Jon Stewart’s audience adds-up to around 4m, once you count all of the re-airings. Which would not only be a consideration when thinking about relative audience size, but the first re-airing of the Comedy Central block is just 90 minutes after Conan ends, so it’d be interesting to see if the ratings for that or any subsequent re-airings change. Of course, Conan also re-airs immediately after George Lopez, so maybe once the dust settles, a pattern will develop. As for myself, though I could watch Stewart in his first timeslot without any problems, I prefer to watch it online at my convenience and where I can watch the extended interviews without sitting through a rehash. I was kind of disappointed that there doesn’t appear to be full episodes of Conan available and because it’d be a good way to attract non-regular viewers to the TBS site, it kind of strikes me as a missed opportunity to promote their other shows. After all once I watch Conan, in addition to the sidebar ads, I might consider clicking around to see what else TBS may have available online.

    I agree. Last night, I DVRed Conan and Leno (only because I wanted to see his interview with the Governator, which is usually pretty funny). Since my DVR can only record two events at a time, I had to record Jon’s show that reairs later in the night. I think DVRs will be televisions saving grace.

  • marcus.lewis

    Magister said:
    To be fair, I believe that I read somewhere that Jon Stewart’s audience adds-up to around 4m, once you count all of the re-airings. Which would not only be a consideration when thinking about relative audience size, but the first re-airing of the Comedy Central block is just 90 minutes after Conan ends, so it’d be interesting to see if the ratings for that or any subsequent re-airings change.

    Of course, Conan also re-airs immediately after George Lopez, so maybe once the dust settles, a pattern will develop.

    As for myself, though I could watch Stewart in his first timeslot without any problems, I prefer to watch it online at my convenience and where I can watch the extended interviews without sitting through a rehash. I was kind of disappointed that there doesn’t appear to be full episodes of Conan available and because it’d be a good way to attract non-regular viewers to the TBS site, it kind of strikes me as a missed opportunity to promote their other shows.

    After all once I watch Conan, in addition to the sidebar ads, I might consider clicking around to see what else TBS may have available online.

    Hope this helps. Go to teamcoco.com and they link to the full episodes. Here is last nights, it appears at first glance that they separate them into segments, but that all the segments should be available:

    http://www.tbs.com/video/conan.jsp?oid=233887&eref=sharethisUrl

  • Corvax

    Well it is no surprise, he is better than both of them.

  • http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

    @marcus.lewis: I watched the clips this morning and I swear that right before I posted the above comment, I clicked on the “full sps” tab and it was still empty, but now last night’s show appears to be there. So maybe they’re just slow on the upload or I missed it the second time.

    Thanks.

  • david r

    I always liked his show, esp with Andy as sidekick. After the way Letterman went after Palin and her kids, I quit watching late night talk shows. Leno is a bore. Jimmy Fallon shows some promise. Anyway, you ought to read Conan’s Harvard commencement:

    http://www.february-7.com/features/co...

    or catch it on YouTube:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cFY0-IFcwc&p=CAE619434851F588&playnext=1&index=31

    It is a riot.

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