Late Late Night

During my semi-retirement (what i choose to call my current unemployment) I've found myself staying up later most nights, since there is no real reason to wake up before 10:30, or 11:30 in the morning. As a result I've found myself watching more late night TV than usual.

I like Dave more than Jay, so unless the guest disparity is immense I'll be watching Letterman. After that I would usually flip back to NBC to watch Conan, but he's off now getting his team ready to take over for Jay, which I'm excited for. As I have been flipping through the late late shows I started to wonder: "How has Conan being off the air affected the ratings of the other shows?" I'm really interested to know the stats behind this. Have his viewers stopped watching late late shows and started going to be earlier? Have they latched on to a new late late show host in anticipation of Conan moving to an earlier time slot? Or do they flip back and forth based on guests?

Even though I would like to know what the magnitude of the "Conan Effect", I've got my own opinion on the situation.

Jimmy Fallon - He's taken over Conan's timeslot and why someone would give this moron a talk show is beyond my comprehension. He wasn't funny on SNL, he laughs at his own jokes (which you could overlook occassionally if they were funny), and he's always got this dumb look on his face that, despite me being a bit of a pacifist, makes me want to inflict serious physical harm on him. I'm actually thinking of coming up with a Dr. Cox style rant of all things I hate less than Jimmy Fallon, or things that are funnier than Jimmy Fallon but I'm a bit tired so fill in the blanks yourself. I will write the ending for you though - "and of course, Hugh Jackman".

Jimmy Kimmel - Jimmy is in a weird position because his show actually stradles the Jay/Dave and Craig/Conan (now Jimmy Fallon) slots. My guess is that Kimmel's fans haven't been drastically affected by the abscence of Conan, unless there were a small group of Conan fans who were never really satisifed with either Jay Leno or Letterman. I've seen some segments of Jimmy's show and I think it's pretty good. The spots with Sarah Silverman, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are classic (almost on par with Triumph at the Star Wars premiere) and Jimmy is a fairly good interviewer.

Craig Ferguson - His show may be the most similar to Conan's in the sense that they realize that they are on really late and their audience is always the most serious group of people. In fact, on most nights Ferguson is literally manic. He combines the self-deprecating (and ragging on CBS) approach of Letterman with the cheesy gags and random acts of insanity that Conan did, just without a partner like Andy Richter or Max Weinberg. He doesn't really get that many great guests in my opinion, but the "interviews" are usually very entertaining.

So, in my opinion, until I need to get to bed earlier I'm going to make Craig Ferguson my Conan replacement. It wasn't that hard of a decision. But choosing between Conan and Dave is going to be a tough one.

Proof that Ferguson is manic, and doesn't get many guests. Whatch his interivew with Russell Brand, it's about 15 minutes long and is serious for about 40 seconds and then they just go completely off their rockers.
Part 1

Part 2