No, his 10pm show gets about half that.
My daughter is a college senior in Boston, and everyone she knows LOVES Conan – but a lot of them watch it on online the next day (Hulu, I think?). I wonder if they are considered in all of this.
One of the reasons that NBC gave Conan the Tonight Show was because of his popularity with younger viewers. In theory Leno’s viewers should die soon and his rating will decrease while Conan’s will only go up as more people become teenagers.
I think this is exactly what will happen soon after Conan leaves to Fox and NBC will end up looking like a bunch of turds again.
This NY Times report said Leno got 4.6 million viewers against the BCS Championship game. I’d bet 5-6 million is still accuarate for his average in 2009.
I don’t think Leno has anything to do with Conan’s poor ratings. When NBC did better than CBS at 10pm around the turn of the century, Leno beat Letterman. But when CBS began doing better than NBC at 10pm a few years ago, Leno was still beating Letterman. I don’t what airs at 10pm affects 11:30 all that much. Not many peoiple are going to be watching the same channel for two and a half hours.
Conan’s ratings problems are his own making because he’s been at the Tonight Show less than a year and of course he needs more time to grow his 11:30 over his 12:30 audience.
I’ll guarantee this: if Johnny Carson had started campaigning to get the Tonight Show back right after Leno took the reins, Leno would be on the casino circuit right now. There comes a time when you have to step aside and let the new generation step up. Carson did that. Leno won’t.
What sucks is that Conan has really done right by the Tonight Show. Even with his manic style, everything about the show is done with class and deference to legacy. It’s a damn shame he isn’t being given a chance to succeed.
There is too much money in TV now to give someone an extended chance , Leno got it in 93 but he was lucky. It used to be very rare for a TV show to get canceled after 1 or 2 shows. Now it happens on a regular basis. For a long time there were only 3 TV shows that lasted 1 episode, now there are many.
Conan has a large base of college students as his fans an audience. Of course college kids have not money to buy things. Thus, they don’t matter to sales.
If you get 99% of the audience, and no one is buying the products no one will advertise. Ratings mean nothing, it’s the type of audience, or rather the ability of the audience to buy things that counts.
Conan was a nobody and NBC took a chance and built him up. He took a #1 franchise and rode it into 3rd, and in big city markets 4th place. Conan was behind, Letterman, *Nightline *, and in many cases, a rerun on the FOX station.
Leno is also a “company” man and has been consistantly. He takes a low key and always publicly backs up NBC. This counts for a lot in corporate environments.
NBC will soon be taken over by Comcast, so who knows what the future will bring, Comcast may have the ability to renegotiate contracts or it may (very long shot) take NBC and make it a cable network. This would cause the value of each NBC affiliate to decline by at least 50% even though NBC is in 4th place now.
The thing about Leno’s show hurting NBC affiliates’ newscasts is puzzling. If you want to watch your local news on your local NBC affiliate, wouldn’t you just change the channel at 11:00 when the CBS, ABC or Fox show you were watching ends? Sure in the old days, when you had to get out of the chair/bed and turn a knob this might have made sense, but everybody changes channels easily with the push of a remote button now. I don’t get it.
A significant number of people will leave the tv on whatever channel is showing at the end of a show. Something like local news is usually not differentiated enough to have people actively switch. I know in Boston we used to watch WBZ, WCVB and WHDH (? was channel 7) late night news pretty much interchangeably.
People with broken/lost remotes are a bigger slice of the demographic pie than you might guess. And anyone can score in the 11:35 slot if they’re semi-following Law & Order or CSI; Conan has not yet had that opportunity. Jay would bomb too if he had to follow something so awful at 10 that people were actually motivated to change the channel.
No, that’s not how people are. Plus you know all those news teasers during primetime will pique a lot of news-watcher curiosity.
What did you expect from the network that brought you MANIMAL and SUPERTRAIN
If Leno retires now that doesn’t mean Conan is safe, it just buys him more time. He still needs to get his ratings up to keep the job long term.
Again, if NBC continues to refuse to advertise his show, his ratings are going to continue to drop.
I see ads for Conan and I don’t watch that much TV.
Ads are not the solution for every product, sometimes the product doesn’t sell no matter how many ads you run.
Bijou Drains, I think you’re wrong when you claim, “It used to be very rare for a TV show to get canceled after 1 or 2 shows. Now it happens on a regular basis.” At the very least, you misunderstand what’s going on. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on this subject:
So let’s look at the American TV shows that were cancelled after one episode:
Who’s Whose, 1951, CBS
You’re in the Picture, 1961, CBS
Turn-On, 1969, ABC (cancelled in the middle of the show by some affiliates)
Coed Fever, 1979, CBS
Melba, 1986, CBS (remaining episodes burned off that summer)
South of Sunset, 1993, CBS (remaining episodes burned off on VH1)
The Great Defender, 1995, Fox (remaining episodes burned off that summer)
Public Morals, 1996, CBS
Lawless, 1997, Fox
Dot Comedy, 2000, ABC
Comedians Unleashed, 2002, Animal Planet
Beware of Dog, 2002, Animal Planet
The Will, 2005, CBS
Who’s Your Daddy?, 2005, Fox
The Rich List, 2006, Fox (revived and cancelled in 2009 on GSN)
Emily’s Reasons Why Not, 2006, ABC
Anchorwoman, 2007, Fox
The Bussey Bunch, 2008, TLC
Rosie Live, 2008, NBC
Quarterlife, 2008, NBC (remaining episodes burned off on Bravo)
Secret Talents of the Stars, 2008, CBS
Osbournes: Reloaded, 2009, Fox (may be revived on another network)
So up through 1993, six TV shows have been cancelled after one episode on American TV. Since then, sixteen shows have been cancelled in the same circumstances. But notice the networks that have cancelled these shows - six on Fox, two on Animal Planet, and one on TLC. Only seven were cancelled in this way on the networks that existed up to the late 1980’s - ABC, CBS, and NBC. The reason that there are more cancellations are that there are more networks. More networks means more shows and thus more possibilities for cancellations. If one looked just at the old networks, it’s six shows from the late 1940’s to 1993 and seven from 1993 to today. That’s a faster pace but not very much faster. And I suspect that even the old networks have more shows at any given time than they used to. There are more fast cancellations today because there are more of everything.
I rember seeing 5 Leno ads for 1 Conan ad. Conan some weeks ties or beats Letterman and usually beats him in the 18-49 demographic. Conan’s average viewer is 9 years younger than Leno’s.
NBC put Conan in a bad place. He needs to compete with Letterman for the over 50 crowd and with Kimmel for the youngins. On top of that, Leno refuses to retire thus siphoning any chance of him inheriting any of Leno’s demographic.
Where is this meme coming from that Conan’s show is doing so terrible? He tied Letterman for November sweeps. Sure, hes not beating Letterman in all demographics or has Jay’s ratings yet, but these things take time. Shuffling his time spot isnt going to help. Its going to produce an even worse Leno show, if thats even possible, and ruin Conan. Perhaps hes better off with Fox and Leno can go back to his “Dancing Jude Itos” and other crummy gags my grandpa loves.
Conan has a hard job ? Sure he does, no argument from me. And I’m sure he knew it was not a lock he would do well at 11:30.
On the other hand is not like the guy is making $50k a year. He’s making major bucks, he just bought a house worth $10 mil. And if NBC axes him I’m sure he will continue to make big money somewhere. TV is a hard business but if you are at the top it pays very well.
The point is that Conan’s ratings are okay while Jay’s are terrible. They are going to ruin Conan for Jay’s giant ago. Turns out no one wants his hackneyed schtick unless they need it in the background while they try to fall alseep.
And yes, in a capitalist system, those who can bring in large sums of money with their talents get a percentage of the pie.
I can understand that Conan fans are upset, but it’s not like the guy is going to end up under a bridge. Assuming he’s out at NBC he’s going to be back on TV with a large contract soon.
Letterman’s first show at NBC got canceled after just 4 months. He ended up doing OK.