Note: LateNighter generally posts late night live-plus-three weekly ratings on a three (business) day delay, which is how they are released by Nielsen.
Late Night with Seth Meyers returned from a two-week vacation last week and quickly made up for lost time, drawing its highest ratings in nearly a year.
According to Nielsen live-plus-three weekly ratings, the NBC late-late show drew an average total audience of 971,000 viewers the week beginning March 31, 2025. That’s an increase of more than 11% since the show’s most recent week of new episodes (the week of March 10, 2025), and up a full 65% vs the re-run filled week prior. The show saw even greater growth among younger viewers, where it was up nearly 73% week-over-week.
It’s hard to say what exactly led to Late Night‘s ratings resurgence last week. It would seem to be more a confluence of factors rather than just one. The show aired its latest installment of Day Drinking (with Paul Rudd ) on Tuesday, which was then repeated on Friday, which were both relatively well-rated, but the week’s highest rated episode came on Wednesday when Meyers sat down with Rachel Maddow and Rob Delaney. Ratings for that one episode were the strongest for a single episode since the show’s 2024 Thankgiving episode.
Meyers wasn’t the only up show last week. With Jimmy Kimmel on vacation, his rivals The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon made double digit gains among total viewers, with Fallon taking the #2 spot from Kimmel among both total and younger viewers for the week. Colbert was the week’s the top-ranked show at 11:35pm.
The picture was less rosy for ABC’s Nightline and After Midnight, which both ceded ground to Meyers.
Switching to cable, Gutfeld! on Fox News was up a fraction of a percent among total viewers, and up nearly 7% among younger viewers. That’s more than The Daily Show on Comedy Central or Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live can say. Both shows were down week-over-week across both both key audience measurements.
Complete ratings charts for the week of March 31st, 2025 follow below.
Note: Time period listed is most common airtime for show.
Live+ 3 Ratings — All Viewers (P2+)
| Avg Share (%) | Avg Viewers (000’s) | Vs Last Wk | |
| 10:00 PM | |||
| Gutfeld! (FNC)† 5 first-run episodes | 7.33 | 3523 | +0.24% |
| Watch What Happens Live (Bravo)* 5 first-run episodes | 0.63 | 305 | -27.91% |
| 11:00 PM | |||
| The Daily Show (COM)* 4 first-run episodes | 2.58 | 911 | -5.70% |
| 11:35 PM | |||
| Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC) 5 repeats | 4.04 | 1,136 | -31.67% |
| The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 8.01 | 2,221 | +13.54% |
| The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 4.52 | 1,248 | +14.30% |
| 12:37 PM | |||
| Nightline (ABC) * 5 first-run episodes | 3.69 | 755 | -10.44% |
| After Midnight (CBS) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 3.12 | 588 | -0.78% |
| Late Night with Seth Meyers (NBC) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 5.18 | 971 | +65.72% |
Live+ 3 Ratings — In the Demo (P18-49)
| Avg Share (%) | Avg Viewers (000’s) | Vs Last Wk | |
| 10:00 PM | |||
| Gutfeld! (FNC)† 5 first-run episodes | 3.18 | 287 | +6.77% |
| Watch What Happens Live (Bravo)* 5 first-run episodes | 0.86 | 78 | -28.23% |
| 11:00 PM | |||
| The Daily Show (COM)* 4 first-run episodes | 2.34 | 160 | -8.30% |
| 11:35 PM | |||
| Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC) 5 repeats | 2.73 | 158 | +1.54% |
| The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 3.63 | 208 | -17.93% |
| The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 3.10 | 176 | +16.56% |
| 12:37 PM | |||
| Nightline (ABC) * 5 first-run episodes | 2.24 | 98 | +7.96 |
| After Midnight (CBS) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 2.11 | 85 | -26.80% |
| Late Night with Seth Meyers (NBC) 4 first-run episodes, 1 repeat | 3.82 | 154 | +72.65 |
Ratings data © The Nielsen Company, used under license.
“Late Night” is not even reaching one million viewers anymore. That is really sad. Back in Dave and Conan’s day, the show had well over 2 million viewers per night. Tom Snyder on CBS averaged 1.5 million viewers respectively. Thank-you for sharing.
And yet some of Seth’s most popular segments consistently get anywhere between 1.5-3+ million views on YouTube. Ratings are important to the network but they are far from the only indicator of a show’s popularity. As more and more people switch away from linear TV as a whole and the way late night shows are more accessible on the internet it makes sense that ratings aren’t what they used to be.