Donald Trump
has been the best thing to happen to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Ever since Trump plopped into the Oval Office, Stephen Colbert has used cutting critiques of the president to boost CBS to its first late-night ratings win since 1995.
But last week, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon briefly reclaimed its crown for the first time since the inauguration. For the week of June 19-23, Fallon averaged 2.66 million viewers to Colbert’s 2.62 million, Variety reports. However, this is pretty misleading, really, considering that repeats don’t count towards Nielsen data, and that’s exactly what Colbert was forced to air due to his recent Russia trip.
So it appears that reports of Colbert’s demise are being greatly exaggerated, and we might reasonably expect his ratings to pop back up over Fallon this next week. Although it’s important to note that even though Colbert wins the war, the battle over late-night adults aged 18-49 is still consistently won by Fallon. This is the group most important to advertisers.