Who Has The Most-Watched Late Night Show? A Look At How Colbert, Kimmel And Fallon Stack Up With Ratings

The late-night wars have dramatically changed over the years. Jay Leno and David Letterman used to battle it out for the top spot, while ABC made a push with a late-night show of their own.

The landscape has changed, as Leno and Letterman have left the scene, while Conan O'Brien left network TV entirely.

So who has the strongest position among the big three networks?

Stephen Colbert is the late night TV leader with "The Late Show" on CBS. For the week of Nov. 16, it drew an average of 3.57 million, while NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" is a distant second at 2.37 million. ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" came in third at 2.08 million, according to data compiled by TVbytheNumbers.com.

Colbert attributed the show's improvement, at least partially, to more live content.

"Two weeks of that changed all of our approach to the show, and it also changed the trust I had to place in my staff. You cannot do two weeks of live shows and be a control freak," Colbert told the New York Times.

His regular comments about President Trump might have also helped the show. Delayed viewing, made possible with DVRs, might also be a factor. Colbert replaced Letterman in 2015 but last year he was trailing Fallon’s show by about one million viewers.

Late-night television is lucrative for networks. "The Late Show" took in $402.5 million in advertising from 2016 to 2017.

Jake Richardson contributed to this report