NBC Late-Night Shows Top Ratings

NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” rejoined the late-night scene on Tuesday and quickly took their usual places back atop the ratings.

As on CBS’ competing talk shows hosted by David Letterman and Craig Kilborn and ABC’s “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” all of which returned to the schedule Monday, the hosts departed from their usual formats to discuss the recent terrorist attacks.

In his opening monologue, Leno told people he understood if they were not ready to watch comedy at this juncture and said that “‘Nightline’ is a great show too.”

Leno pledged that his program’s humor would not be inappropriate or insensitive in the days ahead, characterizing his role as a sort of cheerleader--providing a diversion to those people such as the firefighters dealing with the rescue effort in New York.

“In a world where people fly airplanes into buildings for the sole purpose of killing innocent people, a job like this seems incredibly irrelevant,” Leno said. Like Letterman, he attributed his decision to get back to work in part to New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has urged people to resume their lives.

According to preliminary ratings Wednesday from Nielsen Media Research, “Tonight” was watched Tuesday in 6.6% of homes in 51 major cities monitored by Nielsen--about the same percentage who tuned in “Late Show With David Letterman” on Monday. While national ratings were not available, those cities account for nearly 60% of U.S. households.

Letterman’s audience slipped to 4.1% of homes in the Nielsen-metered markets on Tuesday, slightly ahead of ABC’s combination of “Nightline” and “Politically Incorrect.” Ratings were also slightly higher than usual for O’Brien’s program.