According to this article, Jay Leno's Tonight Show is now matching Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show in the number of young viewers. If that's so on a long-ongoing basis, it's a pretty good argument that NBC was not wrong to replace Conan with Jay. Jay has bettered Conan's numbers in total viewers since the switcheroo but lagged somewhat in the 18-49 demo before.
The piece also notes that Leno is drawing a much larger audience than Conan's current show but that's not of huge surprise or significance. A show on NBC would outdraw a show on TBS.
In other late night news, Nightline has lately been doing better than Jay or Dave.
And this article says Jimmy Fallon's crushing his competition because he's attracting superstar musical guests. Fallon may be drawing viewers because of such bookings but the text of the piece shows that Fallon isn't, as the headline claims, whipping those opposite him. It says right there that Fallon has 1.79 million viewers versus 1.77 for Jimmy Kimmel and 2 million for Craig Ferguson.
Do you see any whipping going on there yet? He and Kimmel are almost tied (though granted, Kimmel's numbers should be higher since he goes on earlier) and Ferguson is still ahead of Fallon…with a show, by the way, that probably costs less than a third of what Fallon's show costs to produce. The article does cite numbers that suggest Fallon has the momentum but he ain't whippin' yet. And might his uptick have as much to do with the gains of his lead-in, Mr. Leno, as it does with great musical guests?
One thing that makes me suspicious about the article is that its whole premise is that Fallon has gained because he hired the former music editor of Billboard magazine. Where did this article appear? Billboard magazine.