Last night in the Late Night Ratings, Letterman had a 3.5 and O'Brien had a 3.0. By contrast on the same night last year, Letterman had a 2.8 and Leno had a 3.8.
So that doesn't look good for Conan O'Brien but it's not as bad as it seems. He's doing much better with the coveted younger demographic…the one that advertisers pay the megabucks to reach. So what we may be in for here is that Dave will wind up with the more popular show while Conan will wind up with the more profitable one. Given that NBC seems willing to settle for that at 10 PM in prime time, that might mean Conan will hang in there for a while. I do not think, as some are speculating, that meetings are currently being held at NBC to figure out how to dump the Irish kid with the funny hair and get the guy with the chin back in control of The Tonight Show.
Hey, last night Dave had Regis Philbin on and introduced him by saying Regis now holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for the most number of hours logged in front of a TV camera. I assume that's true, in which case he would have taken the title away from the previous leader in that category. Wanna guess who that was? Mull that one over and then click here to get the answer.