Move Over Stephen Colbert, Is Greg Gutfeld Officially The New King of Late Night TV?
Fox News’ late-night political comedy show, Gutfeld!, continues to grow its audience and has dominated broadcast network late-night shows in recent weeks to become the most-watched late-night show on television.
Gutfeld! pulled in its largest audience yet on March 15, bringing in some 2.372 million average viewers. While the Greg Gutfeld hosted show has been a hit at 11 p.m. since its launch on April 5, the program had regularly landed behind CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
However, in mid-March Gutfeld’s increasing audience was more than enough to eclipse Colbert and the rest of the late-night field, including Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Gutfeld! first topped Colbert in the ratings for a full week last August and did so on several other occasions, but had generally settled into a competitive second place behind Colbert – a trend that Gutfeld’s growing audience seems poised to end.
On the 15th of this month, Colbert brought in 2.16 million total viewers, while Kimmel drew in 1.31 million viewers and Fallon had 1.16 million viewers – all well behind Gutfeld.
Gutfeld also topped his broadcast competitors in the key 25-54 age demographic, bringing in 446,00 demo viewers to Colbert’s 406,000.
On Wednesday, March 16, Gutfeld went on to top Colbert yet again with 2.17 million viewers to 2.03 million viewers, respectively. Kimmel and Fallon brought in 1.38 million viewers and 1.23 million total viewers, respectively, to land in 3rd and 4th overall.
Gutfeld’s recent ability to beat Colbert is undoubtedly made all the sweeter for Fox News as Colbert’s executive producer Chris Licht is set to be the new chairman of CNN, starting on May 1.
In the week since losing to Gutfeld, March Madness has knocked Colbert’s show off the CBS schedule, which has left Gutfeld to dominate the competition. He’s been passing the two million viewer mark nightly while Kimmel and Fallon top out around 1.5 million total viewers. Gutfeld also regularly has more viewers in both the demo and in overall viewers than every show on CNN and MSNBC.
Gutfeld does have a scheduling advantage over the broadcast late-night hosts. As Variety pointed out in October, “Gutfeld! airs a half-hour earlier and it has an advantage by airing at 8 p.m. on the West Coast.” However, broadcast networks are in many more homes in the country and are free for viewers.
Fox’s launch of Gutfeld! last Spring has been an undeniable success for the network as the show gave new life to its programming after 10 p.m. and has now elevated the cable network to competing with broadcast in the highly competitive and lucrative late-night space. Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch boasted to investors on a conference call earlier in the month that Fox News is no longer competing with just the other cable networks but instead has its eye on dominating broadcast as well.
Variety noted the launch allowed Fox News to “capitalize on the strong lead-in provided at 10 p.m. from Laura Ingraham’s program in a way that also expands the boundaries of Fox News programming. Gutfeld! easily improved on the cabler’s performance at 11 p.m. with the previous show in the hour, Fox News @ Night With Shannon Bream. Bream’s hour moved back to midnight and has also improved that time slot.”
Gutfeld currently pulls down double duty on Fox as he also cohosts the top-rated The Five, making him one of the most, if not the most, visible personalities in cable news. His eponymous show is a mix of panel discussions and Gutfeld’s own monologues, and it’s established him as one of Fox’s strong voices criticizing the left, skewering the shortcomings of top Democrats with his trademark acerbic wit.
“How’s it going? Don’t respond, I can’t hear you. My new meds took care of that,” said Gutfeld on Thursday night, kicking off his show.
“Let’s do some news,” he went on, before quickly segueing into an attack on the Democrats:
When I look at the rubble in these bombed-out cities in Ukraine, I’m reminded of some of the cities here, except our refugees are heading to Florida and we didn’t need bombs to do it, just a few Democrat mayors who let the cities crumble into wastelands of hopelessness. If you brought Ukrainians from Mariupol to San Francisco to live they would be like, uh, screw this I’m heading home.
Colbert’s return to the air after March Madness will be telling to see if Gutfeld can remain on top or if Colbert will quickly reclaim his crown as the king of late night.
