• by David Kaplan , October 7, 2004

Maybe it was a good thing for Jay Leno to announce he's calling it quits after all. CBS' "The Late Show with David Letterman" has closed to within just 0.4 of a rating point behind rival NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" among adults 18-49, the closest the two shows have been in nearly a decade, according to Nielsen ratings for the first two weeks of the new season.

"Furthermore, Dave has cut Jay's viewer advantage by more than half to less than 1 million viewers," a CBS spokespeson said Thursday. "This is the closest competitive position to 'The Tonight Show' in both adults 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 54 since the start of the 1995 season."

In both adults 18 to 34 and adults 18 to 49, 'Late Show' trails 'The Tonight Show' by just -0.4 of a rating point compared to -0.9 last year, -0.3 in adults 25 to 54 compared to -0.8 last season.

Season-to-date, "The Tonight Show" is down 7 percent in households (4.1/11 from 4.4/12), -6 percent in viewers (5.59m from 5.97m), -11 percent in adults 18 to 34 (1.6/08 from 1.8/08), -13 percent in adults 18 to 49 (2.0/09 from 2.3/10), and -8 percent in adults 25 to 54 (2.3/09 from 2.5/11) compared to last season, according to Nielsen.

NBC representatives have an explanation for what they see is aberrant ratings activity that tilts slightly in CBS' favor.

"CBS had a lot of atypical things going on in premiere week, such as John Kerry's appearance on 'Letterman,' the 'Amazing Race' finale in prime time, and the highly promoted 'C.S.I.' premieres, and still fell well short of Leno," an NBC representative said. "Then in week two, the margins increased significantly--from 0.3 to 0.5 in 18-49, from 500,000 to about 1.4 million in total viewers--and back to what are historically some pretty routine margins for Jay over Dave."

The NBC rep noted that Letterman was in somewhat of a slump through 2003 (he was out with shingles for a while in the early part of the year, and tried Friday guest hosts in June--both of which caused him to lose momentum), so part of what's happening now is that Letterman is getting back to his more usual levels relative to Jay. For example, last week, Jay won by 0.5 of a rating point, down from his year-ago margin of 0.7 but up from two years ago, when Jay won by 0.4. "And even with all those forces in play, and with CBS giving Dave his strongest 10:30 performance relative to NBC in a long time, there's still a decisive margin separating Leno from Letterman," the NBC rep added.