I know it’s difficult to let go of something when you’re simply too emotionally wrapped up in it to take that otherwise simple action. Today would have been my dad’s 94th birthday, though he never got to celebrate the last 12. Like so many days in this period between Mother’s Day and the mid-July day he was thankfully taken from the fate of life as a vegetable this is a hard one for me, and I’m sorry to say it doesn’t get much easier even with the passage of time. I’d like to believe I’m given a mulligan because one should be allowed to mourn the death of a parent, but I can tell you plenty of otherwise well-meaning people have told me over the years to simply move on and get over it. I suppose they’re right, but today’s not gonna be the day I’ll wholeheartedly agree.
So when I see the post-mortem topic of how the absence of Stephen Colbert has contributed to the destruction of what was once seen as the bastion of democracy and free speech that CBS once was provides yet another opportunity for someone like Matthew Belloni and his ridiculously overpriced PUCK website to put forth yet another tantalizing graphic like this that they’d like one to believe is further evidence that the despair and emptiness you might be feeling is somehow supported by yet another new batch of ratings data I get all the more incensed that something like this seems to have enough appeal to folks who can’t let go to be newsworthy. Among those who were impacted enough to at least report what they were fed yesterday was CONSEQUENCE’s Wren Graves:
It’s been a couple of weeks since The Late Show with Stephen Colbert went off the air, and the dust is settling on the ratings shakeup. As Puck reports, Jimmy Kimmel Live‘s ratings have surged 66%, while The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon‘s marks have grown a modest 11%.
In the week of June 1st, Kimmel pulled in 2.72 million viewers, a big leap from last year where his show earned 1.64 million viewers over the same period. Meanwhile, Fallon had 1.14 million last year and 1.27 million this year, a much more subtle uptick. And nobody has fared worse than CBS, which had first-place 1.77 million last year, and is now down 57% to 764,000 with the new show in the time slot, Comics Unleashed.
The graphic Belloni deployed as clickbait to his various social media clarions is laid out cleanly and meticulously and given various qualifiers such as the fact that Kimmel’s start times and start times have been slightly altered by post-season basketball and hockey both last year and this. This also doesn’t yet reflect the impact that this week’s numbers, which for the NBA games in particularhave reached levels heretofore not seen in this century, likely have had on Kimmel even allowing for the fact that there’s 35 minutes of local news separating game’s end from his monologue–let alone how those delayed newscasts have provided an atypical competitive force against Fallon and even what remains of Byron Allen’s appeal. It clearly came from a source nuanced and niggly enough to have some purported research expertise. In the circles that Belloni travels in and with the relationships he’s built, I have zero doubt this ultimately came from someone with access to Nielsen data and its support platforms that other mere mortals in the press–and observers like moi– would otherwise have.
Which is why I have no trouble calling out Belloni and his amplifiers for once again being either naive and/or lazy enough to represent correlative data as conclusive and not even trying to go the extra step necessary to actually make the point they would like to that attempt to give comfort to those who can’t seem to recover from Colbert’s departure.
It’s something referred to as an audience flow study, though it may very well be called something else these days given Nielsen’s desire to rebrand things every decade or so to give off the appearance of progress. It dissects the sources and destinations of audiences at two points in time and space. There are four different “buckets” that a program can draw audience from–its own show’s history, that of a specific head-to-head competitor, from “all other” viewing sources other than the ones specifically identified in an analysis, and from “set off”.
Using the inflated Kimmel numbers as an example, the net increase of 1.08 million viewers year/year seems to line up almost identically to the 1.06 million viewer decline that CBS has experienced with the switchout from Colbert’s show to Allen’s time buy. Belloni even puts in the fine print the fact that the COMICS UNLEASHED number he’s using represents only the first of the two half-hour episodes that’s filling the time slot. On an apples-to-apples comparison, the hour averaged 635,000 viewers, which means he could have claimed COMICS UNLEASHED has given CBS a -64% decline over Colbert’s YAGO. Some might consider this an act of unnecessary generosity.
But completely lost in translation is how many of Colbert’s viewers went to Fallon, went to encores of Family Feud, went to You Tube or simply turned off the TV and found something else to do. As well as how much of Kimmel’s newfound audience was present because they were too shell-shocked by OG Anunoby’s miracle to have switched the channel even more than a half-hour later, or perhaps decided they had already seen that encore of Family Feud to seek out something else. Or, maybe, decided all the hoopla over Kimmel was finally worth checking out any TV at all for change. After all, June 2025 was long before Kimmel was in Brendan Carr’s crosshairs, and even before Colbert was publically executed–or so might his disenfranchised minions claim.
And Matt, if you think I’ve singled you out, think again. I raised very similar issues and suggestions when I mused about the aftermath of 2020 election coverage where a similar audience flow study might have provided some very needed insights and receipts to the overreactors at FOX News. And while it might seem a bit grandiose for someone like me to make the kind of claim that I could have saved democracy had I still been at FOX at that point, I did convince the guy who ran the joint to go in another direction with another audience flow study. I can’t say with assurance he would have been similarly receptive at a point when the esteemed likes of Sean Hannity were whispering alternative theories in his ears. But I know I sure as hell would have tried.
Consider this, Matt–you’re established yourself as best-in-class enough to charge the kind of rates you do and have a passionate enough audience that gets jazzed when you give them even this kind of simple analysis. Think how much more valuable you’d be to them–and the industry you purport to know more about than just about anyone–if you even tried to do what I did, or at least properly instructed the same people you have in your pocket who have the ability to do so.
This is honestly a story that should go away because Colbert ain’t coming back and Kimmel’s got his own problems (and an imminent summer vacation ahead that will render this all moot until Labor Day). And unless the prayers of so many of your subscribers who undoubtedly chose to watch a livestream from the Kennedy Center in lieu of a Kimmel rerun last night are finally answered, the guy who so many of them blame for all of this isn’t waddling off into the sunset either.
But you seem to think it is. Matt. So at least make the effort to cover it accurately the way a real researcher would–or should. You wanna swim with the sharks? Then get those arms moving.
Until next time…