• Chicago Tribune, Thursday, May 11, 2006 11 AM

Phil Rosenthal, the Chicago Tribune's TV columnist, makes a point that sometimes seems to elude the mainstream press: Three current TV personalities that are the darlings of the nation's buzz-makers enjoy what are, in context, rather puny Nielsen ratings. Rosenthal points to Conan O'Brien (NBC), Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central), and Anderson Cooper (CNN/CBS), saying these are fine, entertaining guys and, right now, h-o-t. But in the overall scheme of things, c'mon, hardly anyone's watching them. And those who are skew to the young side of the demo charts. "The Colbert Report averaged fewer than 1.5 million total viewers in the week that followed [his speech at the White House correspondents dinner], and that was an increase of 37 percent from the show's year-to-date average through the end of April," Rosenthal writes of the Comedy Central show. "You would think that more people would tune in to see a guy whose full-on, in-character shredding of the president and press at their Washington annual lovefest soiree so energized conspiracy-minded folks of all political stripes, a performance reportedly streamed 2.7 million times in less than 48 hours on one Web site. But no. Advertisers are ga-ga because something like 40 percent of Colbert's audience is between the ages of 18 and 34. But ordinary people? Not so ga-ga."

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