Late-night talk show return pales while Gutfeld! snatches viewers

Fox News maintained its spot in first place in prime-time television yet again despite late-night talk shows returning.

Per Nielsen’s ratings, Gutfeld! in particular nabbed the most viewers last week at 2,062,000, leaving CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert trailing behind with 1,984,000 viewers. Next was ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 1,625,000 viewers and NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon at 1,329,000. The Fox News program hosted by the titular Greg Gutfeld was also the No. 1 show within cable news when it came to the 25-54 demographic, boasting 302,000 viewers within that age group.

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Gutfeld! notably does not have Writer’s Guild of America members on its team, so it continued airing through the union’s strike, which lasted some 144 days. All the other programs in the top four were affected because they hired WGA writers.

As a network, Fox News continued to have the most total day viewers, which perpetuated a streak of 138 weeks.

Fox News referred to Gutfeld as “the king of late-night” in its press release on the recent ratings. The anchor hasn’t been afraid to criticize his own network, such as when he compared his network’s partnership with Univision to that of Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney. The two networks came together to host and moderate the second Republican primary debate last month. A panel of moderators included Dana Perino of Fox News, Stuart Varney of Fox Business, and Ilia Calderon of Univision. Gutfeld thought Calderon unloaded “a litany of liberal cliches” during the debate.

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“By the way, this isn’t on Fox, so don’t accuse me of shooting in the tent,” Gutfeld said at the time. “Hosts had their autonomy over their questions. This is on the RNC, who felt they had to have Fox partner with Univision as if it would be value-added when it was value-subtracted. Perhaps give Univision their own debate, right, instead of loading questions with like these not-so-subtle accusations.”

Last month, Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced that he would step down from his role as head of the network and of the news division. Instead, his son, Lachlan Murdoch, will take the position of chairman of both Fox and News Corp.