Nobody Watches Late Night Anymore
A year plus after the whole late night kerfuffle, everyone's back to not caring at all about late night. During this past premiere week (when all the shows are new and sparkly) both Jay Leno and David Letterman's ratings bombed.
In the all-important young people demo, Letterman lost 270,000 viewers from last year while Leno lost 200,000. Overall, Letterman lost a whopping 560,000 viewers, with Leno losing only 160,000, because while he lost young people he gained olds. (But old are useless, so he still lost.) Both shows were beaten by freaking Nightline, the first time that's ever happened during premiere week. Yikes.
It only makes sense that the first real victims of the DVR and computer TV age would be the people on the edges, the daytimers (see: all of soap operas) and the late nighters — these are the penguins on the outside of the huddle, left to freeze in the coming polar winter. You're next, everything else. [NYT; image via Getty]