X FACTOR FINALE: IT WAS NO AMERICAN IDOL

Rival networks probably concluded months ago that Thursday night’s season finale of The X Factor would attract a huge audience, and they therefore programmed mostly reruns opposite it. But that was when producer/judge Simon Cowell was predicting that regular episodes of the talent show would attract 20 million viewers or more and when Fox was […]

LENO AND LETTERMAN TAKE BIG RATINGS HITS

It was not an auspicious start-of-the-season week for either Jay Leno or David Letterman. With DVR use way up and more and more viewers watching shows via cable’s on-demand technology or via Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services, or catching hipper, less restricted hosts on cable, like Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien, the two late-night […]

DAVE PHONES CONAN

David Letterman may have lost some of his younger viewers to Conan O’Brien following O’Brien’s move to TBS, but he assured his audience Tuesday night that he and O’Brien remain on friendly terms. With band leader Paul Shaffer playing straight man, Letterman said on Late Show that he had made a phone call to O’Brien […]

CONAN MEETS HARRY POTTER — IN HIS AUDIENCE

Conan O’Brien may be taking some of the advice from network executives that he spurned when he hosted NBC’s Tonight show. In the recently published The War for Late Night, author Bill Carter, who covers television for the New York Times, writes that the execs repeatedly urged O’Brien to mingle with and interact with the […]

AD BUYERS UPBEAT OVER CONAN’S FIRST WEEK

After his first week on basic cable, Conan O’Brien’s TBS show is being assessed as a huge success by several advertising executives, Advertising Age reported today (Monday). “He’s bringing in really young viewers. The median age is over 20 years younger” than his rivals’, Amy Sotiridy of Interpublic Group’s Initiative told the trade publication. While […]

CONAN’S SHOW TOO FAMILIAR? MAYBE THAT’S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

Although the critics’ principal complaint about Conan O’Brien’s new show has been that it failed to innovate and dragged out just another tired, late-night-talk-show format, a veteran network executive has maintained that viewers demand such a format. In an interview with Reuters, Richard Wald, who served stints as president of ABC News and NBC News […]