talkshowpocalypse

Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show Doing Great, If You Ignore Half the Statistics

Good news for Conan! Since he took over last month, the median age of the Tonight Show’s audience has fallen by ten years, from 55 to 45. Bad news for Conan! The shift is due mostly to a huge loss of older viewers who used to watch Jay Leno (many now watch Letterman). Good news for Conan! He’s dominating among young adults 18 to 34, a group traditionally loved by advertisers. Bad news for Conan! NBC has been way more successful selling Tonight Show ads targeted at older demographics, a network source tells the Times, presumably because college-age kids are more cheaply reached via the Internet and none of them will ever be employed or have disposable income anyway. So we suppose this is mostly bad news.

‘Tonight Show’ Audience a Decade Younger [NYT]

Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show Doing Great, If You Ignore Half the Statistics