LETTERMAN FINALE DRAWS ALMOST 14 MILLION VIEWERS

Wednesday’s finale of CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman drew a massive 13.76 million viewers from 11:30 p.m.to 12:55 a.m., according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. It was Letterman’s most-viewed telecast since Feb. 25, 1994, when the show followed the network’s primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics. By contrast Wednesday’s telecast followed the final half-hour — the “reunion segment” — of the season finale of CBS’s Survivor, which attracted just 6.89 million viewers. Indeed, Late Show‘s audience was larger than that of any primetime network show airing earlier in the evening. Those huge numbers also gave The Late Late Show with James Corden, which followed, a series-high rating of 4.01 million viewers. However, Letterman’s finale fell short of Jay Leno’s on The Tonight Show in February 2014. That farewell attracted 14.6 million viewers.