By Tom Corless
New Rochelle, NY --- With the debut of "Conan" last week on TBS, the late night wars have officially moved to an entire new battlefield: cable television. This is not to say that late night talk shows have not existed on cable before Conan O'Brien unleashed his world-renowned orange hair on the basic cable world. The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and many others have paved the way for the former broadcast star and his cast of lovable misfit characters in non-broadcast television. "Conan" even pushed back an existing cable late night talk show, "Lopez Tonight", to take its 11PM time slot. So if "Conan" is not the first late night talk show to move beyond CBS, NBC, and the other network television giants, why does this change everything? Because cable has never been so close in the competition.
The premiere episode of "Conan" on November 8th defeated both "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "The Late Show with David Letterman", the two longest standing and most revered late night shows television has to offer. "Conan" did not defeat either of the pair for the reminder of the week, but for a brand new talk show on cable television to even be in close competition with CBS and NBC is unheard of. TBS and O' Brien will gladly take the overall third place while continuing to lead in the key 18-49 year old men demographic that equals big advertising bucks for the all comedy network and Team Coco.
Meanwhile, things are not looking so exciting for "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report", both of which lost droves of viewers to "Conan" last week. It would seem that TBS is stealing more viewers from Comedy Central than NBC and CBS combined. Both programs lost over a half million viewers during the premiere week of "Conan". With this kind of drastic change is only a week's time, it wouldn't be a stretch to think that this late night power shift may have some eliminations from cable long before anyone on network television raises the white flag in defeat.
While it may be too early to declare winners and losers in this late night battle, the first week of "Conan" can be considered a television-changing event. Cable television has broken the barriers of the past and has time and time again proven it is just as powerful as network TV. On thing is for sure; as the late night wars rage on, the viewers will be the biggest winners. Never before has there been so many choices in late night entertainment, so put on your pajamas, pick a channel, and enjoy the show.
Expand Your Knowledge
-First Week Ratings for "Conan"
-The Story of the Tonight Show
-"Conan" First Week Ratings Drop is Nothing to Fear
-Conan's Audience Young and Plentiful
1 comments:
Really good article. It's apparent you used a couple of different sources for it.
Conan's new show puts me in an interesting place. I used to be a huge fan of his, but I think he simply has too much competition. I have recently become obsessed with The Daily Show. In the past few months I have gone from hardly ever having seen it to watching it every day. So I'm not giving up that for Conan anytime soon.
Another show I love, and wonder why no one has discussed as part of these late night wars, is Chelsea Lately. So if I'm not watching Stewart I'm watching Chelsea, and if I can both. Yes Chelsea Handler's show is on E! but she is the first to make fun of it and is hysterical. Her shows gets nearly a million viewers per night, so I'm curious why she isn't part of the conversation or how many viewers she lost to Conan.
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