Another big winner last night was Jon Stewart. His live post-debate edition of The Daily Show got its highest rating ever — 2.4 million viewers, up from a previous "best" of 1.9 on 1/21/04. (John McCain was his guest that night.) This goes to what I was saying in a few earlier posts about how the talk show of the future will be live and spontaneous.
Tonight, the night when America is still talking about what happened last night, Leno will have a topical monologue but Letterman will have a show taped last Monday. And actually, if I'd been Leno, I would have done my show live last night. One of the advantages he has over Dave is the time difference, and he's rarely used it to his advantage.