Multiple TV Shows Disrupted by Writers' Strike
(deadline.com)
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To put in context how bad these shows are, Carson delivered ~19M viewers a night, when it last ran in 1992.
Greg Gutfeld leads late-night with 2.35M viewers, followed by Colbert with 2.14M, Jimmy Fallon 1.32M and Jimmy Kimmel 1.08M.
All of them summed up are about 1/3rd of Carson's nightly viewership, back in 1992, when the population was 256.5M people, vs 336.5M today.
These shows are shit and they are dying.
There wasn't much other choice back then, besides the other two networks, and maybe an independent station or two if they were still on that late at night.
That being said, yeah, and we went to the fuckin' moon with half the population there is now, too. Quality over quantity always wins. There's more channels and services, too, but most of the shows and movies now just plain suck. Carson had to work for his share of the viewership, even so.
Hell, when Letterman was only getting around ~3.5mviewers in the late 90s the network freaked out.
Curious how it compares to TV ratings in general.
It’s a different entertainment landscape now, for sure. I’m sure a good deal of the people who watch modern late night are just older folk who were around for Johnny and just never stopped watching late night, out of habit through all the changes in who the hosts were over the years. My in-laws are that cohort exactly, they’re old and just never changed their habits. Meanwhile I recently hit 40 and I’m still young enough to where I never STARTED watching late night, other than Craig Ferguson sometimes when he had his show. Certainly I never watched late night habitually, even with Craig. Those numbers aren’t going to go up, the continuing decline will be the legacy cohort dying off.