Kimmel Up, Fallon Down 8% as Late-Night Gap Widens
By @sharedot · · 6 pages
- Television
- Late Night
- Jimmy Kimmel
- Jimmy Fallon
Cinemablend reports Jimmy Kimmel Live averaged 3 million October viewers while Fallon's Tonight Show fell 8%, leaving NBC less than half his audience.
October ratings show a widening late-night split
Cinemablend, citing a report from latenighter.com, says the October ratings picture is one of divergence at the top of late night. Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged 3 million viewers, a minuscule 3% decline from September, while The Tonight Show fell 8% in overall viewership to an average of 1.38 million.
According to Cinemablend, that puts Fallon's NBC staple at almost less than half the audience of its ABC competitor at the same 11:35 p.m. slot.
Why Fallon's slide stands out
The surprising part, as Cinemablend frames it, is that Fallon is the outlier: most of the field is holding or gaining.
Late Night With Seth Meyers inched up 1% to 1.05 million viewers, Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed jumped 19% to 797,000, and Funny You Should Ask rose 17% to 549,000 — with CBS paid to air that programming regardless of ratings.
Cinemablend notes Kimmel leans on his ongoing feud with the President and his administration, and that his reign continues after Stephen Colbert left the scene.
The key-demo gap networks care about
Cinemablend points to one metric NBC may find harder to shrug off: The Tonight Show dropped 13% in the key 18-49 demographic, to 201,000 viewers, while Jimmy Kimmel Live! averages 329,000 in that demo.
The outlet notes the advertising-critical demo matters greatly to networks, and that Kimmel is beating Fallon there too. Cinemablend adds that The Tonight Show has long taken a social media-first approach to its programming, raising the question of how NBC feels about this on-air disparity.
Kimmel's monologue moment making the rounds
TheWrap reports Kimmel cracked himself up during Thursday's monologue while riffing on the resignation of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang amid scrutiny over extramarital affairs, including one with a woman suspected of spying for China.
According to TheWrap, Kimmel mocked the idea that Trump didn't know she was a spy — "That's the point of being a spy" — then nearly called the president's assistant Natalie Harp "Melania," telling the laughing audience, "Melania was spying for the Slovenians this whole time."
TheWrap says a White House representative did not immediately respond to its request for comment.