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Late Night Race Heats Up as O’Brien AND Letterman Increase Their Leads—O’Brien with 18-49 Year Olds, Dave With Total Viewers

Jul 23, 2009  •  Post A Comment

NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” widened its lead over CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman” last week among adults 18-49 year olds.

At the same time “Late Night With David Letterman,” buoyed by a much-publicized appearance by Paul McCartney, had its biggest victory in nine years over "Tonight" among total viewers.

For the week of July 13-17, “Conan” averaged 1.38 million adults 18-49 (1.0 rating/ 5 share), compared with “Letterman’s” 1 million (0.8 rating/3 share). “Conan’s” 37% margin of victory over “Letterman” was up over the show’s 29% win the week before.

However, “Letterman” 3.5 million total viewers was significantly more than “Conan’s” 2.7 million viewers.

–Sergio Ibarra

2 Comments

  1. You guys should ignore the NBC press release headline and do the math. Conan’s lead in the 18-49’s did not grow, it actually slightly shrunk. Just look at the numbers week to week and do the math. Letterman’s overall lead is growing, Conan’s demo lead is shrinking – I guess NBC feels they need to resort to out and out deception.

  2. Letterman hosts the Late Show, not Late Night. It’s a 5-sentence story, you can’t check what you write before posting it?

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