Reviews for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon reached a new low this week, as Monday’s episode attracted only 947,000 viewers in total. According to The Wrap, the former dawn king was dominated by his colleagues, including Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, who attracted an estimated total of 2.03 million and 1.67 million viewers, respectively, that night.
On Monday, January 11, episode of The Tonight Show featured interviews with guests Bill Burr and Rashida Jones and a musical performance by Old Dominion. Fallon’s monologue that night talked about Trump’s permanent Twitter ban and Nickelodeon’s NFL broadcast, among other topics.
It is important to note that Nielsen’s initial rating estimate does not take into account the delay in viewing or transmitting. The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon it may not have attracted many live viewers, but thousands of fans may have tuned in via Hulu, Peacock or NBC.com, data of which are not included in the 947,000 number. In addition, many viewers (especially younger ones) prefer to stream individual clips on YouTube instead of watching the entire episode live, a habit that may be distorting the data as well.
The Tonight Show The ratings were in free fall during the Trump era – Colbert overtook Fallon in the ratings in November 2018 and has remained at the top ever since – but the drop was particularly sharp amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wrap reports that The Tonight Show had three record lows since August 2020, according to Nielsen estimates: the first on August 18 (1 million viewers in total), followed by another on September 22 (992,000 viewers in total) and then Monday, January 11th.
Nielsen has only kept classification data since 1986, but during that time, The Tonight Show always attracted over a million viewers every night – until now. Of course, viewers in 2021 will have more options than ever, but the continued success of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live suggests that this is a specific Fallon problem, since millions of Americans are clearly tuned in to other nighttime shows.
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