Showing posts with label Colbert Report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colbert Report. Show all posts

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Watching political satire on U.S. election night

Thanks to Bill Brioux's tweet on the ratings of The Daily Show & Colbert Report on U.S. election night, this table was possible:

Show Network Viewership Time (EST) Live
The Daily Show Comedy 269,000 11:00 PM Yes
The Daily Show CTV 374,000 12:05 AM No
The Daily Show Total 643,000

Colbert Report Comedy 226,000 11:30 PM Yes
Colbert Report CTV 170,000 12:36 AM No
Colbert Report Total 396,000


Last night, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert presented their shows live on Comedy Central in the States and on the Comedy Network in Canada. It would be nice to see how these numbers compare to non-election figures, but I had no luck in finding them (nor do I have access to them.)

One thing that stood out is Colbert's audience (170,000) is less than half of Stewart's (374,000) on the same network, CTV. Without any previous data to compare, it's difficult to say why this is the case. One possible reason for this is some viewers may have switched from the fake news to the real news as they waited for Romney to concede, which he did at 12:55 a.m. with 12 minutes left in Colbert's show.