Colbert Conquers Late Night in Debut; Falls on Second Night

On its opening night on Tuesday, Stephen Colbert's Late Show on CBS delivered impressive ratings numbers that allowed the show to easily outpace the late-night competition, including NBC's Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Preliminary ratings for Tuesday's late-night shows gave Colbert 6.6 million total viewers, compared to about 3 million for Fallon and 1.8 million for Kimmel. Colbert's audience was also the largest of any Tuesday-night episode of the Late Show in 20 years, excluding David Letterman's farewell week on the show just before his retirement.

The numbers for Wednesday night were not nearly as impressive for Colbert. His show lost more than a third of its total viewership compared to Tuesday night's ratings and, more importantly, lost about half of its viewership in the important 18-49 age demographic. Fallon picked up considerably in that key demographic from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Although it's far too early to declare a winner in this new late-night battle, could it be that younger viewers, while initially curious about the newcomer, might find that they prefer lip synch battles to political candidates? Even the face-off of political candidates could work in Fallon's favor for the rest of the week, since Fallon welcomes bombastic ratings grabber Donald Trump on Friday and all Colbert has to offer is Joe Biden on Thursday.