The Late Night Battle

David Letterman...64-years-old

Jay Leno...61-years-old

Conan O'Brien...48-years-old

Jimmy Kimmel...43-years-old

Jimmy Fallon...37-years-old

Premiere Week:
Letterman lost 560,000 viewers from last year.
Leno lost 160,000 from last year.
Emmy-nominated Fallon (the host of the youngest late night show) came in with 1.7 million viewers.

There has been a lot of articles recently explaining the decline of late night talk shows. But the question isn't, "Are viewers losing interest in these shows?" but rather, "In general, why has the viewership been decreasing?"

Is it the the hosts themselves? Some people think so. Is it the length of the shows? The DVR and Internet capabilities? Possibly. Or maybe people are just going to bed earlier?

I think it's a mixture of all of them...except maybe the nation's bedtime (I still need to do some research on that.) There is something to be said for viewers wanting to see new and younger faces (Jimmy Fallon). And they also want entertaining ones (sorry George Lopez).

Due to many reasons, primarily the Internet, the attention span across the nation has decreased, so an hour-long segment sometimes seems a lot longer than a half hour one. For me, it depends on the show. But for a talk show the format is very consistent and that can get really old.

Then comes the question of DVR and Internet programming options. If I'm interested in a talk show, I have no problem recording it to watch at a later (or earlier for that matter) time. The "Live" aspect doesn't do much for me anymore. It's an overused word...but that's a discussion for another time. Viewers, especially the coveted young people, often times only watch TV shows online. TBS is trying to get the advertisers for O'Brien's show to focus on his online presence rather than his declining television ratings. Howard Stern doesn't think this is going to be very successful though.

Either way things are clearly changing across the late night platform, even across the entire television medium. These questions may need to be directed more broadly to all talk shows--late night, daytime, and primetime. Over the next few weeks let's start paying attention what shows are successful.