Early spin on late night

Forget mundane skirmishes over booking guests or conceiving the best comedy bits. The late-night battle between “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Late Show With David Letterman” this fall has boiled down to back-and-forth salvos of public-relations spin.

Of course, the beauty of ratings is that both networks can use them to support their respective points, prompting a weekly barrage of news releases that draw different conclusions from the same set of numbers.

So CBS, which signed Letterman to a much-publicized contract extension in March after he received overtures from ABC, is pressing the point that its host has momentum and is closing the gap with the front-running “Tonight Show,” capitalizing on bigger audience lead-ins into local news thanks to its new 10 p.m. dramas -- particularly “CSI: Miami” on Mondays and “Without a Trace” on Thursdays.

NBC, by contrast, has hammered home that Leno has maintained “decisive margins,” withstanding “Late Show’s” gains on certain nights and in selected cities.

Where does the truth lie? Four weeks into the new TV season, “The Tonight Show” is averaging 5.8 million viewers versus 4.1 million for Letterman -- still a commanding advantage. Both shows are down compared with the same period a year ago -- when late-night viewing surged in the wake of Sept. 11 -- but Leno has fallen a bit more, so the spread between them has narrowed ever so slightly.

In short, on its face, not much has changed.

“Late Show” is exhibiting improvement on some fronts, with producers of the show citing increased tune-in Monday as proof that Letterman would equal or surpass “The Tonight Show” if the playing field were leveled. NBC still enjoys a sizable lead at 10 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, thanks to “ER” and two editions of “Law & Order.”

“Lead-ins have been, are and always will be the biggest factor in late-night ratings,” said “Late Show” executive producer Rob Burnett, who is president of Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants. To bolster his case, Burnett said that the two shows have been in a “virtual dead heat” on Mondays, where the “CSI” spinoff handily beats NBC’s “Crossing Jordan.”

If the debate seems academic, Letterman’s second-class ratings status -- despite the show’s greater critical acclaim and five consecutive Emmys as outstanding variety or comedy series -- was a major issue in the host’s contract negotiations. Letterman has chafed at trailing Leno, and his camp has consistently blamed the late-night disparity on CBS’ weaker prime-time performance.

Among the concessions extracted from CBS, in fact, was a commitment to run more “Late Show” promotions on Viacom-owned sister properties, including MTV, VH1 and Infinity radio stations.

Moreover, CBS and a few media outlets focused attention on Letterman before the season, projecting that higher ratings at 10 p.m. would spill over, benefiting late local newscasts and late night -- all areas sure to be closely watched as a key period for stations, the November rating sweeps, begins Thursday.

For their part, NBC officials contend that nearly a decade into the Leno-Letterman face-off, viewers have had ample time to make their choice, dismissing the notion that prime-time results are responsible for “The Tonight Show’s” dominance.

Gary Considine, executive producer of “Tonight” for NBC Studios, conceded that “CSI: Miami” has had some effect, but said it requires that sort of extreme to move the late-night needle in either direction.

This fall’s ratings, he said, “just keep proving the point that people know these two shows, they know these two hosts, and they know how to use a remote control.”

Considine added that NBC officials were nervous about a shift given the extra support for Letterman, but said thus far those concerns have been unfounded. “The bottom line is there’s no story, and that’s the story,” he said.

Los Angeles-area ratings support the correlation of prime time, news and late-night viewing, although even with KCBS-TV making inroads in all three areas, Leno still has a sizable lead.

According to Nielsen Media Research, KCBS is up more than 20% versus last year from 10:45 to 11 p.m. -- the window leading directly into local news -- and its news has risen by a similar margin. That has translated into a 15% ratings increase for “Late Show,” to about 122,000 homes tuning in on average, or 2.3% of TV households in the viewing area.

KNBC-TV, by contrast, is down 15% across the board during the last quarter-hour of prime time, its 11 p.m. news and “The Tonight Show.” The NBC-owned station retains a clear advantage on all three fronts, however, and Leno still nearly doubles Letterman’s audience locally, averaging almost 235,000 homes nightly.