What a difference an hour (earlier) makes.
The audience for Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show hello was 173 percent—yes, 173 percent—bigger than the audience for his Late Night goodbye, NBC said today.
And now you know why David Letterman was dead set on moving to 11:35 p.m. all those years ago.
There was no word yet on exactly how many people tuned in O'Brien. But NBC said the Los Angeles transplant helped the storied Tonight franchise to its best overnight Monday ratings since Jay Leno paid tribute to Johnny Carson after the late-night icon's passing in January 2005.
Leno's 17-year Tonight Show run ended Friday, with a top-rated final show that outdrew O'Brien's first show by about 23 percent. (No surprise there: Last shows, O'Brien's own experience excepted, tend to be bigger draws than first shows.)
It'll take a while to see if O'Brien can keep up the everyday, Nielsen-winning pace set by Leno—and, more interesting, to see if people prefer a Letterman-influenced host to the real, live Letterman.
Last night, it was no contest. The curiousity factor—Would O'Brien's hair look the same? (Pretty much.) Would his sense of humor go all Leno-y? (Nope.)—killed Letterman. In the nation's top TV markets, the new-era Tonight Show, featuring inaugural guests Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam, beat an all-new Late Show by 154 percent.
Letterman, however, remained unbowed.
"I'm still here. I knocked off another competitor," he joked (we're pretty sure) in Monday's monologue.
And now you know why 11:35 p.m. isn't so much a time slot as a war zone.