LENO, FALLON Top Late-Night Competition, Week of 4/8-12

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" delivered its biggest 18-49 demo audience in 10 weeks as it defeated "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 18-49 viewers and total viewers for the week of April 8-12.

At 12:35 a.m. ET, NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" delivered bigger audiences than CBS's "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and ABC's "Nightline" during their head-to-head half-hour in every key ratings category. Note that CBS's Monday, Thursday and Friday results are excluded from the weekly averages due to delays for sports coverage, while Friday's "Kimmel" was an encore.

Leno bested Kimmel in all key ratings categories - adults, men and women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54, plus total viewers. And while "Tonight" and "Late Show" both rounded to a 0.8 rating in 18-49, Jay delivered the bigger audience in that key demo, 1.047 million to 974,000. That 1.047 million viewers was Jay's biggest 18-49 audience since the week of Jan. 28-Feb. 1.

Leno has now delivered bigger 18-49 audiences than Letterman for the last 21 weeks in a row and topped Kimmel for 12 of their 14 head-to-head weeks. In total viewers, Leno has out-delivered Letterman for 25 weeks in a row and Kimmel for 14 of 14 weeks.

Versus the same week last year, Fallon was up 10 percent in adults 18-49 (to 668,000 from the year-ago 610,000), up 21 percent in adults 18-34 (289,000 vs. 238,000) and up 3 percent in total viewers (1.658 million vs. 1.609 million). Season to date, Fallon is up 7 percent in viewers 18-34 (297,000 vs. 278,000).

Fallon has now generated bigger 18-49 audiences than Ferguson for 26 of the last 27 weeks and prevailed in total viewers for 23 of the last 25 weeks. Versus "Nightline" in their head-to-head half-hour, Fallon has out-delivered the ABC newsmagazine series for 14 weeks in a row in viewers 18-49 and 10 of the last 11 weeks in total viewers.

Photo by: Andrew Eccles/NBC

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