The whole dust-up 'twixt David Letterman and Governor Sarah Palin seems to be about 98% over. That 2% will linger because there are some loud activists out there who vowed to never rest 'til Dave was fired and they seem to be the type who'll keep a crusade going to no effect rather than admit it failed. They should have taken a cue from Sarah and quit when they could claim victory.
If their protest had any chance of endangering Letterman's employment, it would have had to turn out a meaningful demonstration in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater the other day. Instead, reporters there to cover the picketing outnumbered the 40-50 folks with placards…so of course, the story became about the protest effort fizzling, not about a growing demand in this country for Dave's rather unimpressive scalp. A couple of the interviews with the demonstrators made them look pretty hateful. There was one woman yelling about Letterman's bastard child and the "whore" he finally married. Good way to claim the moral high ground, lady.
Throughout this squabble, Dave's ratings have generally gone up. Makes you think Conan O'Brien oughta consider trashing the Palin daughters a little. But actually, Letterman's ratings were edging upwards even before this all started.
A lot of folks writing about this have talked about Sarah Palin being "Dave's Hugh Grant," meaning that she'd catapult him into back into the lead. That's the wrong way of looking at this. Way too much has been made of the impact Mr. Grant had on the late night ratings. When he went on The Tonight Show to speak about his arrest for soliciting sex, it was indeed the first night that Jay Leno beat Dave Letterman…the first of a nearly-unbroken 13-year winning streak. But Leno was edging upwards before that. All Grant did was start that streak a month or so earlier than it would have without him.
People did not thereafter watch Leno in larger numbers because he'd once had Hugh Grant on. It was just a matter of them liking one show more than another. In subsequent years, there was the occasional night when Dave would beat Jay, usually because of some "one-time" event — having Hillary Clinton as a guest, Dave's return from surgery, etc. Some of those outlier broadcasts yielded huge tune-ins for one episode and occasionally a smaller, lingering excitement for the following one. But within two days, the numbers were always right back where they'd been before…every time.
The Palin Controversy has helped Letterman, no doubt. But what will be more significant — because it'll matter in the long run — is if more people are deciding they'd rather watch Dave than Conan. Which is all the ratings contest is really about.