Jimmy Fallon's refusal to take down Trump is hurting his ratings big time
Stephen Colbert has found his niche as President Trump's chief critic, but his success comes at the expense of longtime late night favorite Jimmy Fallon.
Last fall, Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show had a firm lead over late night competitors Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, with an average 3.3 million viewers per night. Now, Colbert has soared, drawing in 3.5 million viewers each night, while Fallon is down to 2.6 million, according to The New York Times.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The New York Times credits Fallon's slump to his lighthearted, crowd-pleasing content. Audiences seem to favor Colbert's biting takedowns of Trump, and it seems that appeal hasn't withered in the 10 months since Inauguration Day.
Fallon still leads in viewers aged 18-49, but even that advantage has narrowed drastically. With Trump in the White House, it looks like dancing pandas and lip-sync battles just aren't cutting it anymore.
-
Inside Minnesota’s extensive fraud schemesThe Explainer The fraud allegedly goes back to the Covid-19 pandemic
-
‘What a corrective to such nonsense’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
TikTok secures deal to remain in USSpeed Read ByteDance will form a US version of the popular video-sharing platform
-
Son arrested over killing of Rob and Michele ReinerSpeed Read Nick, the 32-year-old son of Hollywood director Rob Reiner, has been booked for the murder of his parents
-
Rob Reiner, wife dead in ‘apparent homicide’speed read The Reiners, found in their Los Angeles home, ‘had injuries consistent with being stabbed’
-
Hungary’s Krasznahorkai wins Nobel for literatureSpeed Read László Krasznahorkai is the author of acclaimed novels like ‘The Melancholy of Resistance’ and ‘Satantango’
-
Primatologist Jane Goodall dies at 91Speed Read She rose to fame following her groundbreaking field research with chimpanzees
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
