News / TV

Trevor Noah attracting more millennials and their younger siblings (ages 18-34) to The Daily Show

Fans of Jon Stewart may still be lamenting his departure from The Daily Show some two years ago, but Comedy Central has gotten exactly what they sought when they replaced Stewart with Trevor Noah, appealing to the next generation of 18-34 year-olds.

Since The Daily Show with Trevor Noah began on Sept. 28, 2015, the 11 p.m. ET/PT half-hour on Comedy Central has grown not just among millennial viewers, but also improving year-over-year all summer in total viewers, online streams on CC.com, Facebook, YouTube; as well as likes and shares via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Noah lodged his largest viewership yet in August 2017, with an average total audience of 1.6 million.

It also has surpassed The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon among viewers 18-34.

When you expand the audience to include Generation Xers ages 35-49, The Daily Show finishes third behind Fallon and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

 

August is traditionally a slow month for late-night TV as most hosts take at least a week or two off. But even excluding the repeats, you can get a sense of where the younger eyeballs are tuning in after 11 p.m. Eastern/Pacific these nights…

When you look at these breakdowns, you can see just how turned off Millennials and Gen X have been toward Fallon since Election 2016, as his audience suffered the biggest drop-offs since August 2016 (38 percent among Millennials, down 27 percent for Millennials and Gen X combined). Colbert, who surged past Fallon among total viewers since Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in January 2017, has seen the bulk of his growth from viewers 35 and older — or those viewers old enough constitutionally to become president themselves.

Watch What Happens Live on Bravo, hosted by Andy Cohen, has seen solid gains among young viewers in the past 12 months.

Conan on TBS and Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC also have seen sharp declines in TV viewership over the past year, although their online video numbers remain solid.

Note: James Corden’s Late Late Show numbers don’t appear on this list (which came via Comedy Central and Nielsen ratings), although Corden’s weekly numbers in August among ages 18-49 were about level with Conan’s. Also, these two charts exclude the weekly late-night offerings from Samantha Bee (TBS), John Oliver (HBO), Bill Maher (HBO), and Jim Jefferies (Comedy Central), as well as Chelsea Handler (Netflix).

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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