CONAN’S AUDIENCE DROPS — A BAD SIGN?

As expected, the audience for Conan O’Brien’s new talk show on TBS dropped by nearly a third on its second night, falling to 2.8 million viewers from 4.2 million on Monday. But news reports gave the decline contrasting interpretations. Several reports cited negative criticism of the first show by some TV critics and suggested that the fact that so many viewers had abandoned the show on just the second night was a bad omen. On the other hand a news report on the CBS website (of all places) was headlined “Another Big Audience for Conan O’Brien” and MediaPost.com quoted Horizon Media’s Brad Adgate as predicting that, despite the dip, Conan would still beat the competition this week in the ratings among the key 18-49-year-old demo.