Fox News’ late-night political comedy show, Gutfeld!, continues to grow its audience and has dominated broadcast network late-night shows in recent weeks to become the most-watched late-night show on television.
Gutfeld! pulled in its largest audience yet on March 15, bringing in some 2.372 million average viewers. While the Greg Gutfeld hosted show has been a hit at 11 p.m. since its launch on April 5, the program had regularly landed behind CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
However, in mid-March Gutfeld’s increasing audience was more than enough to eclipse Colbert and the rest of the late-night field, including Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Gutfeld! first topped Colbert in the ratings for a full week last August and did so on several other occasions, but had generally settled into a competitive second place behind Colbert – a trend that Gutfeld’s growing audience seems poised to end.
On the 15th of this month, Colbert brought in 2.16 million total viewers, while Kimmel drew in 1.31 million viewers and Fallon had 1.16 million viewers – all well behind Gutfeld.
Gutfeld also topped his broadcast competitors in the key 25-54 age demographic, bringing in 446,00 demo viewers to Colbert’s 406,000.
On Wednesday, March 16, Gutfeld went on to top Colbert yet again with 2.17 million viewers to 2.03 million viewers, respectively. Kimmel and Fallon brought in 1.38 million viewers and 1.23 million total viewers, respectively, to land in 3rd and 4th overall.
Gutfeld’s recent ability to beat Colbert is undoubtedly made all the sweeter for Fox News as Colbert’s executive producer Chris Licht is set to be the new chairman of CNN, starting on May 1.
In the week since losing to Gutfeld, March Madness has knocked Colbert’s show off the CBS schedule, which has left Gutfeld to dominate the competition. He’s been passing the two million viewer mark nightly while Kimmel and Fallon top out around 1.5 million total viewers. Gutfeld also regularly has more viewers in both the demo and in overall viewers than every show on CNN and MSNBC.
Gutfeld does have a scheduling advantage over the broadcast late-night hosts. As Variety pointed out in October, “Gutfeld! airs a half-hour earlier and it has an advantage by airing at 8 p.m. on the West Coast.” However, broadcast networks are in many more homes in the country and are free for viewers.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Mediaite