Image Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC; John Paul Filo/CBSJay Leno has the oldest late-night TV audience, with a median age of 56, according to The New York Times. That’s a jump of more than 10 years since Leno re-replaced Conan O’Brien as host of The Tonight Show. In other words, while more people watch Leno’s Tonight than Conan’s, they’re considerably less young, on average. Shocking? Hardly. Still, it’s interesting to see these hard numbers, isn’t it? Check out the Times‘ full list of median audience ages below and sound off in the comments.
The Tonight Show (Jay Leno): 56
Nightline: 55
Late Show With David Letterman: 54
Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: 52
Jimmy Kimmel Live!: 52
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: 50
The Daily Show (Jon Stewart): 49
The Colbert Report: 37
Lopez Tonight: 33
50 year old watch Jimmy Fallon? That’s disturbing. I’m surprised Colbert’s audience reaches only 37, he is the best out of all of them.
MEDIAN age. That’s the averaged age. Truthfully the most shocking thing on here is how much younger Colbert skews than Stewart.
Johnificiation, that makes it less believable…it means people older than 50 are watching the show.
Median isn’t average. It can be close, but it’s not the same thing. Fifty percent of viewers are younger than the median age, and 50% are older. I’m surprised that the median age drops by almost 10 from Stewart to Colbert. OR AM I???
It doesn’t mean that anyone over 50 is watching the show, it just means that there as many people over 37 as there are under 37 watching. For all we know, everyone 37+ could be between 38 and 49.
The article is a little misleading. Leno does skew older but his audience is so much greater than Conan’s that still he has more 18-49 and more 18-34 viewers than Conan had, or than Letterman has.
It’s not misleading at all. It reports median age. If you were misled, it’s by your own assumptions.
Basically – Leno’s audience won’t be around as long. Have never watched him, won’t ever watch him. He’s not funny, but whatever makes people happy…
Who do you watch? Cause by the numbers- Letterman, Ferguson and Fallon aren’t much younger audiences.
Unless you are patting yourself on the back after watching the Daily Show believing 7 years is such a long time difference.
Really only Colbert and George Lopez are anywhere near Madison Ave’s dream demos. Yet neither seem to be major trendsetters.
Wow, I’m more interested in TDS and CR: 49 vs. 37. That’s such a big difference! But I guess it has a lot to do with the times of the shows.
Basically, it means that the older adults are watching the traditional late-night fare, and their adult kids are watching Comedy Central (at least at that time).
As someone in her 40′s, I often watch both of them the next morning on DVR. Some of us have to get up early to got to work.
True. Colbert competes with Nightline, Leno and Letterman–leaving some of the “older viewers” to switch once The Daily Show is over. Colbert keeps a large portion of the audience (more than any other program Comedy Central placed after it) but not all of it.
Wow, that difference between Stewart and Colbert is by far the most interesting this about this. Very surprising. I basically figured that the same audience that watches The Daily Show also watches Colbert. I would expect a small difference given the time slot and the nature of the show, but that’s really a signficant gap.
Right?? I totally agree. That was surprising.
Not so much suprising as boarderline unbelievable. Not unbelievable in “wow that’s crazy,” but in a “I don’t think these numbers are accurate” way.
I would be interested to know the average age of an EW reader. The reason being that I would bet my entire salary for a year that it skewers much younger than that hack Leno does. Which just goes to show that you need to be a geriatric to find Leno even close to funny.
If you read the full NYTs article, you’ll see that 49 for the Daily Show was actually a mistake; it’s really 40.
“Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the median age of Jon Stewart’s audience on Comedy Central. It is 40, not 49. ”
Which makes a lot more sense.
the daily show number is an error. see correction in NYTimes (from which these numbers are taken). Real Daily Show number is 40 yrs.