Greg Gutfeld Is King of Late Night as His Fox News Show Beats Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon
BY PAUL BOND
8/24/21
The Fox News Channel is claiming a huge victory: its snarky, comedic and conservative host Greg Gutfeld is the new king of late-night television, joining the likes of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman, all of whom have held the title in the past.
And Fox News has the Nielsen data to back up its assertion.
For the first time in a full week (August 16-22), the show dubbed Gutfeld! scored a larger audience than Jimmy Fallon on NBC, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC and Stephen Colbert on CBS.
It's not an exact apples-to-apples comparison, as Gutfeld! airs at 11 p.m. Eastern while the others begin at 11:30 p.m. or 11:35 p.m. On the West Coast, Gutfeld has the advantage of airing at 8 p.m. Despite the time differences, it's a significant milestone nonetheless since the others air on the free broadcast networks rather than cable.
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Gutfeld launched his show on April 5 and made no secret that he was gunning for the same audience that typically tuned in to see the hosts on the big three networks. At least two of those, Colbert and Kimmel, have made their bones bashing former President Donald Trump and conservatives in general, while Gutfeld has done the opposite, thus offering an alternative for late-night audiences looking for a comedic take on world events.
"If you cannot tell the other late-night shows apart, join the club," Gutfeld said just before his show debuted in April. "They're as bland as string cheese and not nearly as appetizing. It's the same jokes, the same assumptions, probably the same writers, all reading the same columns from the same hacks in the New York Times. So we aren't going to be like them."
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