DAVID LETTERMAN - CONAN IS NO LATE-NIGHT KING -- BUT NEITHER IS DAVE

CONAN IS NO LATE-NIGHT KING -- BUT NEITHER IS DAVE

In what is increasingly looking like a seismic shift in late-night TV viewing, CBS's Late Show With David Letterman topped NBC's The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien for the second week in a row, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was the third time in the past four weeks that the CBS show had come out ahead. Not since February 1998, when CBS aired the Winter Olympics, has Letterman beaten his NBC competition on two consecutive weeks. But perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that ABC's Nightline beat both of them. Indeed it was the fourth consecutive week that the ABC News program placed first among total viewers. For the past quarter, Nightline is up 19 percent in total viewers, while the Tonight show is off 39 percent. Last week, Nightline averaged 3.74 million viewers each night; CBS's Late Show averaged 3.45 million; and NBC's Tonight Show , 2.71 million.

24/07/2009