Leno's Late-Night Ratings Sink Lower than Conan's -- and Those Viewers Aren't Coming Back

(MoneyWatch)  Oh, how the "To-night-y" have fallen. In a denouement that even Jay Leno's biggest detractors probably didn't predict, Leno's new Groundhog Day edition of The Tonight Show is sucking wind according to Nielsen's second quarter ratings. And it's not just against Leno's old numbers -- it's against the numbers posted a year ago at this time by Conan O'Brien, who NBC infamously ousted earlier this year -- because his ratings weren't high enough.

All told, Leno's ratings are down 20 percent from the show's performance a year ago, and by 31 percent in adults 18-to-49. As Deadline Hollywood points out, this is partly because a year ago Leno was handing off the baton to O'Brien, which inflated ratings for both hosts of the show, but that doesn't make the current ratings news good. TVByTheNumbers has been tracking Leno's ratings vs. O'Brien's of for the last four weeks, and so far, O'Brien has won, every time. If you look closely at the site's chart of how Leno's ratings are trending vs. O'Brien's, it's a real horse race -- even if one of the horses is dead.

Further, while NBC has been busy issuing press releases about the show's accustomed ratings lead over CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, that conveniently obscures the fact that ABC's resurgent Nightline is now a worthy rival, posting an average 3.7 million viewers in the second quarter to Leno's four million.

It's easy to blame Leno's sinking ratings on the massive blow his reputation took during the O'Brien imbroglio. But that's only part of it. If you're a network TV exec, the really alarming thing about this is that even deeply ingrained viewing habits die fast amidst the ever-expanding smorgasbord of media options. NBC expected Leno fans to pick up where they left off -- after watching his show for 17 years, a hiatus of less than a year seemed like the blink of an eye. Instead, what Leno's ratings are uncovering is that many viewers have moved on -- and there's no looking back.

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