Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien premiere; beats Letterman, 'Nightline' combined

Conan O'Brien has reason to smile after his debut as "Tonight" show host. His first Nielsen Media Research report card showed a 7.1 rating and 17 audience share in the nation's biggest media markets. Those numbers indicate more people checked out O'Brien's show out than watched David Letterman's "Late Show" on CBS and ABC's "Nightline" combined.

"We were very happy," said O'Brien's boss, Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Movie Studios.

The trick is the second night, and the third — and the hundreds more likely to come.

O'Brien set himself apart early from predecessor Jay Leno with his reliance on taped comedy bits, but that approach drew some mixed reviews from the critics.

"I just wish O'Brien had shown more nerve on his opening night," said David Zurawik, The (Baltimore) Sun TV critic.

O'Brien's Nielsen numbers were 19 percent lower than Leno's farewell Friday night, which had an 8.8 rating and 20 share. History suggests goodbyes draw more interest than hellos, even if Leno's exit is only temporary. (He hosts a prime-time weeknight show starting in September.) Leno drew more than 16 million viewers to his 1993 debut replacing Johnny Carson; Carson's farewell was seen by 41 million people.

A typical "Tonight" show this season had a 4.0 rating. Each ratings point represents 1 percent of the nation's homes with TV, which means 7 percent of homes had someone watching O'Brien on NBC. The audience share is the percentage of televisions on at a given time; 17 percent were tuned to O'Brien.

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[TheWittyBanana]

Conan > Leno

[monokhem]

Dear internet. Leno raped and murdered the tonight show while NBC watched.

[Hum0ng0us]

@KaiserJames - Storage. LOL

[JOEAFRIAS]

0:40 wrong....unfortunate

[saveus2132]

@KaiserJames They use it for offices for one of their Los Angeles affiliates I thinl

[christaube]

0:47 OR NOT!!!!!

[KaiserJames]

I wonder what happened to that multimillion dollar set they built? Does NBC use it for something else now?

[majinhiei7]

Conan looks weird without the beard.

[anyname666]

@bobolob

Oh! ! !

I thought that Conan followed Leno in the old days and that people watching Leno (with great ratings) simply switched off Conan when he started to manipulate his Nipple teather (i could be worng)

Neither Conan nor Leno should have moved up.

they both should have left well enough alone - if it ain't broke don't fix it

Both have been put back in their place

The world is safe again

It is all about the money

no viewers no money

simple

[bobolob]

@FrankCastroAre If you watched Craig Ferguson you would know that Craig loves Conan and was recently even on Conan's TBS show. That says a lot about a guy (both Conan and Craig) if you can get network TV personalities to appear on cable when they don't have to.

[bobolob]

@Shadow4Four I think it helps when Conan isn't even on the air for most of 2010.