By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --He may cringe at the thought, but is Stephen Colbert the late-night man for the Trump administration?
Colbert’s “Late Show” won the late-night ratings competition last week over NBC’s Jimmy Fallon for the first time since Colbert replaced David Letterman in September 2015, the Nielsen company said.
The margin was so small – 2.77 million average for CBS, 2.76 million for NBC – that CBS didn’t want to jinx its good fortune by making an executive available to talk about it on Tuesday. But it reflects a turnaround for the troubled show since former “CBS This Morning” executive Chris Licht was put in charge backstage and steered the show toward more topical content to match the times.
The “Late Show” won two of the five nights on which Colbert and Fallon went head-to-head last week, but it was enough to win the week. One night was Tuesday, when Colbert’s former Comedy Central pal Jon Stewart came by to offer an impersonation of President Trump.
The other win was Monday, Colbert’s first night back from a week’s vacation and his first show, he noted, in the Trump era. His monologue that night recorded 4 million views on YouTube, CBS said.
“You’ve got to give the guy credit,” Colbert said of the new president. “He gets a lot of stuff undone.”
It may be Colbert’s first weekly win in over a year, but he’s been creeping closer in the ratings since the election. Fallon still wins among youthful demographics, Nielsen said.
Another late-night story may temper NBC’s disappointment. “Saturday Night Live” is booming, with its most-watched season in 22 years, and Melissa McCarthy’s impersonation of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer last weekend became an instant classic. Only three prime-time shows last week got better ratings among the 18-to-49-year-old age group than “Saturday Night Live.”
Meanwhile, President Trump lost a ratings competition to his predecessor. Trump’s interview with Bill O’Reilly on the Super Bowl preview show was seen by 12.2 million people on Sunday, compared to the 14.9 million who watched CBS’ Gayle King interview former President Obama on last year’s show. In fairness to Trump, Fox aired the interview 25 minutes earlier in the pregame show than CBS, which showed it closer to kickoff.
The Super Bowl gave Fox the easy win in prime time. The network averaged 29.7 million viewers in prime time, followed by CBS with 6 million, ABC with 4 million, NBC with 3.7 million, Univision with 1.8 million, the CW with 1.6 million, Telemundo with 1.4 million and ION Television with 1.2 million.
Fox News Channel dominated the cable networks, averaging 3.15 million viewers in prime time. HGTV had 1.58 million, USA had 1.55 million, MSNBC had 1.42 million and TBS had 1.34 million.
NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.1 million viewers. ABC’s “World News Tonight” was second with 9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.3 million viewers.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Jan. 30-Feb. 5. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. Super Bowl: New England vs. Atlanta, Fox, 111.32 million viewers.
2. “Super Bowl Post Game,” Fox, 61.08 million.
3. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 14.66 million.
4. “Superior Donuts,” CBS, 10.54 million.
5. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 10.13 million.
6. “Hawaii Five-O,” CBS, 9.81 million.
7. “Mom,” CBS, 8.71 million.
8. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 8.5 million.
9. “The Big Bang Theory” (Monday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 8.44 million.
10. “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 7.46 million.
11. “MacGyver,” CBS, 7.43 million.
12. “The Bachelor,” ABC, 7.25 million.
13. “Code Black,” CBS, 6.8 million.
14. “The O’Reilly Factor” (Tuesday), Fox News, 6.76 million.
15. “Life in Pieces,” CBS, 6.63 million.
16. “Last Man Standing,” ABC, 6.6 million.
17. “Scandal,” ABC, 6.55 million.
18. “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials,” CBS, 6.47 million.
19. “Kevin Can Wait,” CBS, 6.39 million.
20. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 6.3 million.
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More