In the 2015-16 season, “The Tonight Show” averaged 3.6 million viewers, giving it an enormous lead of 877,000 viewers over “The Late Show.”
Mr. Colbert’s recent surge is intriguing, in light of the Trump presidency
and given the host’s association with biting political commentary from his days on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.” For the week of Jan. 16, the week before the inauguration, Mr. Colbert came within 8,000 viewers of tying Mr. Fallon, the closest he had come to his NBC competitor since the week he came on the air.
“The Tonight Show” had largely maintained an enormous lead over “The Late Show,”
and this is the first time Mr. Colbert has posed a multiple-week challenge since he took over the show in September 2015.
For the 2016-17 season, “The Tonight Show” has averaged 418,000 more viewers than “The Late Show.” But Mr. Colbert has narrowed the deficit.
For the first time in a year and a half, Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” bested Jimmy Fallon’s
“Tonight Show” in total viewers, according to Nielsen data released on Tuesday.
It is the second time in three weeks that “The Late Show” has virtually tied “The Tonight Show” in the ratings.
For the week of Jan. 30, Mr. Colbert averaged roughly 2.8 million viewers, eclipsing Mr. Fallon’s audience by a slim margin of 12,000 viewers.