Last laugh:
O'Brien's audience soars
In his final week, Conan's 'Tonight Show' hits series highs
By Diego Vasquez
Feb 1, 2010
Whatever Conan O'Brien's enduring legacy is at NBC, at least he went out on top.
The final week of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" soared to series highs, according to Nielsen data, soundly thumping the two competitors, ABC's "Nightline" and CBS's "The Late Show with David Letterman," that had been beating him for months.
"Tonight" averaged a 2.4 adults 18-49 rating and 5.3 million viewers for the week ended Jan. 24, according to live-plus-same-day DVR playback numbers.
That topped the combined rating for "Nightline" and "Late Show" among 18-49s, where O'Brien drew a strong 4.4 for his final episode on Jan. 22.
Among total viewers for his final week, O'Brien finished 1.4 million ahead of Letterman, who had been leading in that category since last summer.
The now-unemployed comedian's final show drew 10.3 million viewers, the biggest audience for "Tonight" since President Barack Obama appeared last year, when once-and-future host Jay Leno was still behind the desk.
The big numbers for the final week can be read in two ways, either as proof that O'Brien can actually attract an audience or as evidence of just how big a train wreck the whole late-night fiasco became.
O'Brien's people will likely sell it as the former, with the comedian eligible to return to television this September and Fox seen as his likely destination.
But if it's really the latter, that probably bodes well for the return of Leno next month, when he regains the "Tonight" show spot after a short-lived primetime bomb that eventually led to O'Brien's exit. People who watched O'Brien's finale with a sort of morbid curiosity will surely want to see what Leno has to say upon his return.
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