Conan (TV Series) - Ratings

Ratings

In overnight Nielsen Ratings, the series premiere of Conan drew 4,100,000 viewers, leading all late-night talk shows, more than tripling the audience of its direct competition, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. In the 18-49 demographic, Conan drew a 2.5 rating and 3,285,000 viewers. It was also watched by 2,451,000 adults in the 18-34 demographic. Ratings throughout the rest of the week fell, and ended with over 2.02 million viewers on Thursday, November 11, 2010. The fourth episode still led every talk show in the 18-34 and 18-49 demographics, however, delivering 980,000 adults and 1,361,000 adults respectively. The median viewer age for the first week of shows was projected to be at 32, significantly younger than that of The Tonight Show and Late Show. The show also premiered in Canada, on The Comedy Network at midnight, drawing 171,000 viewers, and the repeat broadcast at 1 AM on CTV drew 302,000 viewers.

During O'Brien's second week, ratings remained somewhat consistent, and peaked on November 16, 2010, with 1.84 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings. The week would go on to average 1.7 million viewers, and earn an average rating of 1.0 in the 18-49 demographic. During the week of December 13–17, 2010, Conan has fallen behind in the weekly overnight Nielsen Ratings, averaging only 1.3 million viewers, compared to NBC's The Tonight Show (4.2 million), CBS's Late Show (3.6 million), ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1.6 million), and Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (1.6 million).

In January 2011, Michael Wright, head of programming of TBS, said the show was "landing right about where we expected it to. At this number, Conan will run as long as he wants it to."

For the month of June 2011, Conan fell for the first time to fourth among U.S. late-night cable talk shows, behind The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Chelsea Handler's Chelsea Lately; Conan attracted an average of 743,000 total viewers, compared with 808,000 viewers for Chelsea Lately. Among viewers 18-to-49, O'Brien averaged 503,000 viewers vs. Handler's 559,000.

Following the cancelation of Lopez Tonight due to low ratings, Steve Koonin of Turner Entertainment stated he "could not be happier with Conan as a show or Conan O'Brien and Team Coco as people and an organization," going on to say that "what Conan has already won is the absolute of young people."

In an effort to bolster ratings, TBS secured the cable syndication rights to The Big Bang Theory at a reported $2 million per episode to serve as a lead-in to Conan three nights a week. "(O'Brien's) program is the signature show of our line-up and the centerpiece of our network," Koonin said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

O'Brien himself addressed the poor ratings of the show on the December 13, 2011 episode (preceded by an hour show of the best moments from his first year at TBS), stating "If you're watching right now, you're either a huge fan or you lost the remote."

On February 22, 2012, TBS renewed the show through April 2014.