The reviews were far from stellar, but the intrigue of the veteran late-night host moving to primetime, coupled with high-profile guests in Jerry Seinfeld, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Rihanna, propelled “The Jay Leno Show” to a massive premiere rating.<\/p>\n
Preliminary figures estimate that the show pulled 17.7 million viewers with a 5.1 in adults 18-49. In the unfair comparison to the 11:35PM “The Tonight Show,” the 18-49 rating was 50% higher than the final late-night “Leno” broadcast and 34% higher than the widely-viewed “Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” premiere. It also represents a marked improvement from NBC’s usual 10PM fare.<\/p>\n
Expectedly skewing older than many of NBC’s top programs, the 5.1 adults 18-49 number is still quite strong for the network.<\/p>\n
Where the show goes from here, however, is intriguing. One would not expect the ratings to absolutely tank in the next few days (though they should cool off a bit), but it is unlikely they will remain at a dominant level as the month progresses. Between the likely artificial boost of interest in the premiere, lukewarm-to-negative reviews and the fact that CBS and ABC, which feature similarly-skewing (but scripted) series in their 10PM hours, return soon with original programming, “Leno” will not retain a 5.1 average in adults 18-49 over the long-term.<\/p>\n
Still, the first day of NBC’s experiment proved promising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"adace-sponsor":[],"yoast_head":"\n