There was an upside and a downside to the ratings for Jimmy Fallon’s record-late post-football Sunday start at 12:56 a.m.
The September 27 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon drew 1.757 million total viewers and 467,000 adults 18-49, according to Nielsen Live+Same Day data—good for the show’s third-largest total audience of the year and its second-highest demo performance.
But among Fallon’s ten post-Sunday Night Football editions since 2019, Sunday’s episode drew the smallest total Live+Same Day audience and the second-smallest demo audience.
The unusually late start was likely to blame. A marathon Los Angeles Rams–Denver Broncos game pushed NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage 51 minutes past its scheduled end time. After local news, The Tonight Show finally began at 12:56 a.m. ET.
That was later than any of Fallon’s previous post-Sunday Night Football editions, which had started between 12:09 and 12:42 a.m. ET.
Still, the fact that The Tonight Show managed one of its strongest showings of the year despite not hitting the air until nearly 1 a.m. underscores just how valuable an NFL lead-in can be for late night.
Sunday’s episode featured Sylvester Stallone and Luke Bryan and was the first of four special Sunday editions NBC has scheduled for Fallon this season.
The next is set for November 8, following the Tampa Bay Buccaneers–Chicago Bears game.
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