• The Wall Street Journal, Monday, May 4, 2009 9:45 AM

Two months after taking over NBC's "Late Night," talk-show host Jimmy Fallon is holding on to much of predecessor Conan O'Brien's audience. The 15 most-recent episodes of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" have averaged 1.9 million viewers, just 2.8% fewer than O'Brien's average earlier in the season, per Nielsen. About 990,000 of those viewers are in the 18-to-49 age group favored by advertisers, about even with O'Brien's average.

"Considering he's the new kid on the block, he's doing pretty well," says Steve Kalb, director of broadcast media at MediaHub. Fallon's ratings are a welcome sign for NBC, which is likely to be under pressure in the upfront market, which some analysts predict will shrink by 10% to 15%.

NBC's prime-time shows averaged 6 million viewers per minute this season through April 26, down 5.9% from a year earlier, per Nielsen. Excluding the week of the Super Bowl, which NBC aired this year but not in 2008, the drop was 12%

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