There's a New Late Night Ratings King

Stephen Colbert has hit another milestone in his stunning late-night turnaround against Jimmy Fallon of NBC's Tonight Show. Colbert's Late Show won in the Nielsen ratings for the ninth consecutive time last week, his margin of 400,000 viewers the widest lead since the CBS star overtook Fallon with a sharp concentration on politics, reports the AP. Fallon aired a rerun Friday; otherwise the shows were all fresh last week. More ominously for NBC, Colbert tied Fallon among viewers aged 25-to-54 for the first time, encroaching on younger viewers who are more valuable to advertisers. Fallon had been the unquestioned late-night king until the advent of the Trump administration, and he's been struggling to regain his footing.

Boosted by the NCAA tournament, CBS dominated last week with an average of 9.7 million viewers in prime time. NBC had 5.3 million, ABC had 4.4 million, Fox had 2.7 million, Univision had 1.5 million, the CW had 1.39 million, and Telemundo had 1.35 million. Fox News Channel was the week's most popular cable network, averaging 2.27 million viewers in prime time. Excepting NCAA coverage, CBS also had the two most-watched shows of the week. NCIS drew 14.35 million viewers, while The Big Bang Theory drew 12.78 million. AMC's The Walking Dead and ABC's Dancing With the Stars had 11.31 million and 11.12 million viewers, respectively. (More Stephen Colbert stories.)