reclegend22;1601314 wrote:My guess is that Fallon, since he's a pretty safe and vanilla talk show host (unlike somebody more off-the-wall, for lack of a better term, such as Conan O'Brien), has probably retained most of the Leno crowd as well as gained some new followers who are interested in checking out the new Tonight Show host. He's only been doing the show for a little more than a month now. Let's wait and see where Fallon's numbers are three months from now or after Leno's fans regularly start to die, which probably is already happening.
I don't get why so many would choose to avidly watch Fallon. He's a mind-numbingly poor interview who absolutely patronizes his guests by fake laughing after every word they say. It's off-putting, to put it mildly.
I agree with all of that. I don't watch any of these guys, really...just bits and pieces I've seen over the years. I watched a little bit of Fallon right after the Olympics...I thought his show is a lot better than I remember, but still a poor interview.
I haven't seen hardly any of Conan on TBS. Agree with others that he lost something after leaving Late Night.
Don't know if Fallon will have staying power. He's been compared to Carson, so maybe that will work for the older audience. And Letterman has proven your monologue can suck and people still tune-in (Conan is not a stand-up, either).
I think all these shows are dying a slow death, although still relatively cheap to produce (especially if you aren't paying Leno $30M+ a year). But I think I read that DVR playback is already up 22% (vs. several years ago)in that time slot.
If Colbert takes over for Letterman, that will be interesting. I think he's hilarious, but not sure how he'd do in that more traditional format.