The folks at “The Tonight Show” might be popping Champagne this week.
Let them. The news for this august talk show hasn’t been good for some time.
Jimmy Fallon’s late-night showcase earned a rare ratings victory thanks to fellow “Saturday Night Live” alums.
During the week of Feb. 10, which welcomed “SNL” alum Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers as guests, “The Tonight Show” averaged a live-plus-same-day rating of 0.14 in the demo among adults 18-49, winning the week among its late-night competitors.
The good news ends there.
Fallon’s “Tonight Show” ratings are chronically behind not just Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” but his broadcast competitors. The show also cut down its programming from five nights to four late last year, another sign of the once-mighty show’s slippage.
Remember, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno lorded over “The Tonight Show” for decades, keeping it the most watched late-night show in the modern era. Leno’s dominance over competitor David Letterman proved the most impressive given the latter’s unique brand.
That dominance ended after Fallon took over the show in 2014.
Now, Colbert’s “Late Show” is the top performer in the traditional 11:30 p.m. ET timeslot, followed by ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
This January 2025 snapshot isn’t an aberration.
Late Night TV Rankings January 2025
1⃣@GutfeldFox! @GregGutfeld
2⃣@StephenAtHome
3⃣@JimmyKimmel
4⃣@JimmyFallon
5⃣@JonStewart
6⃣@SethMeyers
7⃣@Nightline
8⃣ @Midnight
9⃣@Andy pic.twitter.com/nAFNUmO5qN— RoadMN (@RoadMN) February 21, 2025
What happened?
Fallon abandoned the Carson/Leno model, for starters. Those late-night legends didn’t pick a political side. They made fun of the president ju jour, and rarely in a mean-spirited fashion. Leno appears to lean to the left, politically speaking. He’s no fan of President Trump.
You never knew it while watching his nightly monologues.
Carson set the gold standard for this bipartisan approach, and he reaped massive ratings as a result.
Fallon’s “Tonight Show” is mini-Resistance theater. He let President Joe Biden off the hook for four straight years, avoiding the obvious truths about the leader’s cognitive decline. That cowardice mirroed what Colbert and Kimmel did on their shows, but it meant Fallon didn’t pick up viewers who might crave truth in their late-night satire.
Fallon’s monologues are Colbert-lite. They’re left leaning but often toothless. If viewers want hardcore progressive comedy, they know where to go.
Right-leaning audiences similarly know Fallon doesn’t respect or speak to them. So they look elsewhere, either to “Gutfeld!” or other humorists like Tyler Fischer, Tim Dillon or Andrew Schulz.
The turning point for Fallon’s leftward lurch came during the 2016 presidential election. He invited candidate Trump on his show, treated him fairly and even tousled his signature ‘do.
The media savaged Fallon for “normalizing” Trump, and he conducted a mea culpa media tour. He could have defended himself by saying he treats all guests like … guests.
No. He begged for the corrupt media’s forgiveness instead.
That led to his political pivot and, sadly, his perpetual also-ran status in the late-night landscape. He avoids the same material his peers do – like the comically inept leadership from Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.
Fallon’s “Tonight Show” has cozied up to billionaires and apologized for decades’ old blackface material.
Leno’s final “Tonight Show” appearance drew more than 14 million viewers. How many will show up when Fallon ends his NBC tenure? Will the show even survive beyond him?
It all leads to an uncomfortable question: Who is the real Jimmy Fallon? He seems most comfortable with silly sing-a-long bits and apolitical sketches. He’s a solid mimic whose “SNL” background often comes in handy.
He could have cleared a bipartisan lane in the modern late-night field. Instead, he bowed to partisan pressure and ignored the classic Carson/Leno blueprint.
The ratings speak for themselves.
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