• by Wayne Friedman , January 25, 2013

After a brief rise to the top of the late-night ratings heap, "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" has overtaken ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in key viewing categories.

"Kimmel" started the new year, Jan. 8, moving to the most competitive 11:35 p.m. time period. The show was tops among the key players -- "Tonight" and CBS's "Late Show With David Letterman" in its first days.

Now for the week ending Jan. 18, "Tonight" took back its overall leadership with a night-topping 1.05 million viewers versus 939,000 for "Kimmel." "Late Show" was at 889,000. In total viewers, "Tonight" averaged 3.46 million for the most recent week, "Late Show" was at 3.2 million, and "Kimmel" took 2.7 million.

Season-to-date, “Tonight" is now at 3.5 million viewers, "Late Show" at 3.1 million, and “Kimmel" at 2.9 million.

ABC's "Nightline" -- now at 12:35 a.m. -- continues to do well, getting 1.7 million viewers in the most recent week, tying NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." CBS “Late Late Show" had 1.4 million viewers.

This week, a special Thursday episode featuring Matt Damon’s takeover of Kimmel pushed the show to No. 1 among household ratings -- a Nielsen preliminary 2.92 and among adult 18-49 viewers, a 1.23 rating.

Late-night cable TV for the week still gave Comedy Central the best results among talk shows: “The Daily Show,” from 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. had 1.7 million viewers and “The Colbert Report,” 11:30 p.m. to midnight, saw 1.3 million.

TBS' "Conan," which runs for a full hour between 11 p.m. to midnight, took in 900,000. Turner's Adult Swim early programming block scored 2.2 million viewers between 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. For the 12:30 a.m. - 1:30 a.m. hour, the programming block earned 1.5 million viewers.

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