Colbert remains strong in ratings despite dust-up
NEW YORK -- A storm over a crude remark Stephen Colbert made about President Donald Trump didn't hurt the late-night host in the ratings -- to the contrary.
Colbert's CBS "Late Show" had its widest margin of victory over NBC's "Tonight" show since Colbert's debut week in September 2015, the Nielsen company said. The CBS show averaged 3.06 million viewers last week, which was up 12 percent from the previous week.
During last Monday's show, a risque reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prompted calls for a boycott and an FCC investigation. Colbert said two nights later that he might have changed some of his language, but didn't apologize for the attack; the late-night host said he was angry with how Trump treated CBS "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson in an interview.
Colbert has been riding high in the ratings, eclipsing Jimmy Fallon as the most popular late-night host since Trump's inauguration with a steady stream of ridicule for the new president. Last week, Fallon's show averaged 2.65 million viewers.
The most popular prime-time shows last week were CBS' "NCIS" and "The Big Bang Theory," which have been on the air since 2003 and 2007, respectively. CBS won the week with a prime-time average of 7.1 million viewers. NBC had 5.2 million, ABC had 5 million, Fox had 2.4 million, Univision had 1.7 million, the CW had 1.24 million, ION Television had 1.2 million and Telemundo had 890,000.
