Exactly one month into Jimmy Fallon‘s “Tonight Show” tenure, he’s locked in a race with Jimmy Kimmel to be the new king of late night.
So far, he’s ahead.
“The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” has handily beaten “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in ratings and viewers, in part because of curiosity about Jay Leno‘s replacement. His ratings were also bolstered by the Sochi Winter Olympics, Fallon’s lead-in for his first week.
But the gap between the Jimmys is narrowing.
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In its debut week, “Tonight” topped “Kimmel” by 6.2 million viewers on average. Last week, the new host’s third, the gap shrunk by 71 percent to 1.8 million viewers.
Last week was the second week straight in which Kimmel increased in total viewers (by 4 percent), hitting a 14-week high.
But Fallon also tops Kimmel by most social metrics: Fallon and his “Tonight Show” have more Twitter followers and Facebook Likes than his Kimmel and his show.
Kimmel, however, has the advantage on YouTube, where years of viral content have helped him build more subscribers and views. Fallon’s “Late Night” view-count is included in his new “Tonight Show” channel. Fallon’s channel dates back to 2012, Kimmel’s to 2009.
Also read: How Fallon’s ‘Tonight Show’ Debut Week Ratings Stack Up to Kimmel, O’Brien and Leno
Fallon’s page and app are the most popular for NBC.com, but ABC did not provide comparable info.
Fallon also has a higher Positive Q Score — a metric that measures the public’s opinion of a personality — than Kimmel.
TheWrap also broke down Nielsen SocialGuide’s data for the most-recent episodes as of Wednesday night. A Twitter audience of 348,400 saw tweets about “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday, and it had a total of 391,700 Twitter TV Impressions across the night. There were 2,000 Tweets sent by 1,600 unique authors.
Fallon’s numbers: 371,600 people saw tweets about “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday, with a total of 580,200 Twitter TV Impressions across the night. That Twitter audience saw a total of 9,600 Tweets sent by 6,900 Unique Authors.
Since his “Tonight Show” debut, his show is No. 1 across late night, beating “The Colbert Report,” “Daily Show,” “Conan,” “Letterman” and “Kimmel,” according to SocialGuide.
Here’s more data, from Fallon’s debut through last week:
*ABC told TheWrap that the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” YouTube page views are actually closer to 1.6 billion, based on “the aggregate number of views since the lifetime of the channel, published or unpublished.”
