*Summer has often been viewed as a slower season for late-night television, but Tiffany Haddish and Byron Allen are giving two networks fresh reasons for optimism.
Both entertainers delivered audience growth during the same week, suggesting viewers are responding to new approaches as traditional late-night schedules shift.
For ABC, that momentum came from Haddish’s turn behind the desk on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” While Jimmy Kimmel takes his annual summer vacation, Haddish became the first of six celebrity guest hosts filling in before his return after Labor Day, TV Insider reports.
According to LateNighter, citing Nielsen Live+3 ratings, the four Haddish-hosted broadcasts and one repeat averaged 1.83 million viewers and drew 228,000 adults ages 18 to 49 during the week of July 5.
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Compared with the previous week’s lineup of repeats, the show’s audience grew by 26%, while viewership among adults 18 to 49 jumped 37%. The performance also made “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the highest-rated program in the 11:35 p.m. time slot that week.
Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo and Jelly Roll are among the remaining guest hosts scheduled during Kimmel’s hiatus.
CBS, meanwhile, is seeing encouraging early returns from a very different experiment.
Following the end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the network expanded Byron Allen’s presence by moving his long-running series, “Comics Unleashed,” into the 11:35 p.m. hour through a time-buy agreement.
The show’s first half-hour averaged 820,000 viewers during the same week, a 5% increase from the previous week, while its audience in the key 18-to-49 demographic climbed 13%. The remaining half-hours posted even stronger gains, with total viewership increasing by as much as 20% and the demo rising as much as 53%.
CBS previously said financial considerations drove its decision to end Colbert’s program. Allen has argued the move could save the network more than $150 million annually while allowing it to continue offering original late-night programming.
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