No sooner had viewer numbers surfaced for last week that indicated momentum was swinging back toward Jimmy Fallon and NBC, as we reported Tuesday, when CBS announced today that it had regained the lead in total viewers for last week based on Nielsen Live+3 Day data.
It seems CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is posting much larger gains than NBC’s “Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon” in delayed viewing. In Live+Same Day figures for last week, the NBC flagship show held a slight edge in total viewers with 2.66 million to CBS’s 2.62 million. But L+3 figures have CBS back on top with 3.10 million to NBC’s 2.86 million.
The increase from three-day viewing is no contest, with CBS’s “Colbert” gaining an average of 480,000 viewers to just 200,000 for NBC’s “Fallon.”
Last week, Colbert was in reruns.