Despite comedian Jon Stewart’s much lauded return to Comedy Central, the Nielsen ratings in the weeks since his return don’t seem to reflect the initial media frenzy.
Indeed, according to recent Fox News news release, since Stewart’s return to the network on Feb. 12, his show has been left in the dust by Fox News Channel’s late-night talk show, “Gutfeld!,” hosted by comedian and long-time Fox News host Greg Gutfeld.
Though Stewart’s numbers on “The Daily Show” are nothing to sneeze at, the Nieslen ratings from Monday showed that Gutfeld’s show trounced Stewart’s by almost every metric.
In the four weeks since returning to “The Daily Show,” Stewart has been losing in the ratings. The week of Feb. 28 – March 3, he drew in an audience of 545,000 total viewers, with 174,000 belonging to the 25-54 age demographic.
By contrast, Gutfeld’s show drew in a whopping 2.2 million viewers, with 325,000 viewers in that ever important 25-54 demographic.
Even the long-reigning kings of late-night — from Stephen Colbert to Jimmy Fallon to Jimmy Kimmel — failed to overtake Gutfeld.
Colbert came second after Gutfeld, with 1.9 million total viewers and 361,000 in the 25-54 demographic, while Kimmel, in third place, only managed 262,000 viewers in that demographic, out of 1.4 million total viewers.
Fallon was fourth with 1.3 million viewers in total and 328,00o viewers in the 25-54 demographic.
Despite Nielsen ratings seeming like an outdated metric in these modern days of streaming and YouTube, the numbers show a significant amount of the population still tune into these types of talk shows.
Would Johnny Carson be embarrassed by what late night has become?
Moreover, historically left-leaning and cable news and talk shows have dominated ratings and have historically had a significant influence on Americans’ overall political views.
But, as the Democratic Party and liberals in general grow more extreme in their views, espousing radical positions on abortion, gender ideology, and the immigration crisis, it’s clear that most Americans are fed up with hearing the same liberal talking points across the board.
After all, these late-night shows spend most of their time spouting anti-Christian, anti-American partisan garbage.
Most of the alleged “humor” comes from trashing beliefs most Americans hold dear and currying favor with our liberal elites.
Is it any wonder a dissenting voice like Gutfeld is trouncing them in the ratings?
Compare our modern crop of liberal late-night hosts to the undisputed king of late night, Johnny Carson.
Carson was always careful to keep his political views out of his show, except for occasional jabs at politicians, like when his monologue poked fun at Biden during his 1987 plagiarism scandal.
He knew that wasn’t his job — he was fundamentally a comedian, not a political journalist.
The show appealed to everyone, and that’s a large part of what made “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” so successful.
He respected his audience even when he disagreed with them.
Can we say that about Colbert, who derided all of middle America with Wanda Sykes after the Dobbs decision?
Or Stewart, who infamously labelled people who oppose transgender surgeries for minors as morons on his Apple TV show?
Or Kimmel, who said hospitals should turn away unvaccinated patients?
Maybe that’s why American viewers are more inclined to watch a right-leaning talk show rather than one that deliberately insults and alienates them.
You would think that would be a common sense position, but too many late-night hosts have forgotten Carson’s example.
