‘Gutfeld!’ Still King of Late Night*

Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show never took a knee during the writers strike.

Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” kept riffing on the latest Beltway blunders while the rest of Team Late-Night took an extended break.

Prior to the strike, “Gutfeld!” jockeyed with CBS’s “The Late Show” for ratings supremacy. The former airs on cable television, a distinct disadvantage. Still, Gutfeld and co. hung tough and often topped both Stephen Colbert’s show and the late-night competition.

The end of the writers strike didn’t change that dynamic.

From Fox News:

At 10 PM/ET, the king of late-night Greg Gutfeld notably delivered 2,062,000 viewers and 302,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, leading cable news in the younger demo. Gutfeld! topped all late-night broadcast shows including CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (1,984,000 P2+), ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1,625,000 P2+) and NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (1,329,000 P2+) with viewers in the show’s first week back after the writers’ strike.

There’s a catch, though. Two, technically.

“Gutfeld!” shifted from 11 pm to 10 pm EST during the strike. That means “Gutfeld!” can crack wise without direct competition at an earlier time slot with more potential viewers. Also, a newer metric gives Colbert’s “Late Show” a lead in the ratings race.

The “Live+3 Day” ratings take into account “delayed” viewing via TiVo-like technologies allowing consumers to watch shows at a later date.

The far-Left Deadline.com used the latter measurement to declare Colbert the winner.

The traditional wisdom is that late-night shows are watched live on linear television with little delayed viewing, but it seems that many people are taping the show and watching back the next day. We hear that the uplift also over indexes with younger people, which is a surprise given that you’d expect older folk to go to bed earlier and watch the next day, compared to younger people.

Deadline.com didn’t mention “Gutfeld!” in its reportage. That isn’t uncommon. Many media “late-night roundup” stories pretend Gutfeld’s show doesn’t exist.

It’s worth noting that “The Tonight Show,” once NBC’s crown jewel, is now a consistent fourth-place finisher behind Fox News, CBS and ABC.

NBC host Jimmy Fallon isn’t as aggressively liberal as the competition, but his biases are clear for all to see. Those who crave hard-Left polemics before bedtime simply opt for angrier voices like Kimmel or Colbert instead of Fallon.

Johnny Carson reigned supreme as the “Tonight Show” host for three decades, and no competitor could touch him. Jay Leno took the comic baton from Carson in 2002 and ruled late night for another two decades.

That once-mighty institution is no more.