Leno's Q Score Takes It on Chin, But How Bad Is the Injury?

(MoneyWatch)  Maybe I was wrong when I predicted it would be relatively easy for Jay Leno to return to his former status as the king of late night, as if the last year -- and Conan O'Brien's brief tenure as host of "The Tonight Show" -- had never happened. According to Marketing Evaluations, Inc., the people who produce the Q score which rates celebrity likability, Leno has taken a huge hit. In a survey taken between January and early March - in other words, during and after O'Brien's ouster - Leno's negative score went from 26 to 35. In Q terms, that's bad ... way bad. (Theoretically, Q scores can go as high as 100, but they seldom do.)

The clip above helps explain why. It's from this week's "Late Show with David Letterman," in which Leno rival Letterman, and ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel skewer Leno once again, looking back fondly at how much fun they had when the late-night war was at its peak. Then there is O'Brien's continuing presence in the news, and his fresh persona as the guy who isn't allowed to be on TV. All this has helped to keep anti-Leno sentiment very much alive. There is no way to know how long the after-effects of NBC's late-night debacle will last.

Leno is winning the ratings war with Letterman most the time, but the ratings race has by no means been definitively won. On one night early last week, it was Letterman, not Leno, who won in adults 18 to 49; possibly because of the bizarre halo effect of him also being in the news because of the guilty plea on the part of the CBS News producer who attempted to extort him. So far this week, however, Leno has been the clear ratings winner.

Maybe that's because Leno's positive Q score has dropped only slightly, from 21 to 19, even as his negative score has risen sharply. The implication is that those predisposed to like him have started to watch him again, while those who think worse of him never watched his show in the first place.

For now, Leno just has to grin and bear it as his rivals joke at his expense - but he is on his way to getting the last laugh.

Previous coverage of the late-night wars at BNET Media:

• Leno v. Letterman: The New Battle Begins
• Conan Loses, YouTube Wins in Catharine P. Taylor's Six 2010 Media Predictions
• NBC Is Flying a Lot of Pilots -- Is It Really to Fill Up Jay Leno Airspace?
• Jay Leno, David Letterman and the Importance of Not Overthinking Everything