O'Brien Beats Leno on Twitter in Mere Hours

IMO leno is more popular! I don't know the other guy, but I know leno as a car nutter with a huge wallet and very good taste. I don't much care if he got his money from talking to presidents or trees - he's spending it well.

Leno WAS more popular. The fact that it was entirely Jay Leno's fault that Conan Obrien lost his job makes Jay Leno one heck of an asshole. Jay Leno should have gone into retirement like he originally planned.

ye well I don't know anything about that - I can't blame him for making someone else I've never heard of lose his job if I never heard of it.

If Leno didn't pull the rug off of Conan, he might have been a bit more popular than what he is now.

Leno wasn't the one to do the rug pulling, it was NBC that had the final say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Leno tells the tale.
Leno was doing comedy when Conan was in diapers.

I loved the OBrien Tonight show it was funny as heck.

Before when Leno was on and now that he is back on I dont even bother tuning in.

I don't think this speaks volumes about who is more popular, but rather speaks volumes about how different the two Tonight Show star's followers are.

O'Brien has the 16-30 year old crowd, who follows Twitter, while Leno has the 30+ following.

Let's compare apples to apples. Like say Tonight Show ratings with Leno vs. Conan. Leno won hands down. Conan just has a different following and I think would kill if HBO would enter the late night talk show fray and hire O'Brien to host. Fox could work as well.

Leno is a big douche. He try's to act all innocent when he does a lot of dirt behind the scenes. People forget or are to young to know that Johnny Carson (true king of late night) hate Leno and wanted Letterman (way funnier than Leno) to have the Tonight show. Leno and NBC gave Johnny the finger and gave it to Leno. Hey.. it Hollywood and it's business so I get it, but just hate Leno trying to act like he is a victim. Truthfully, he not that funny. Hell, he a good talk show host, but as comedians go he is about a 4 on funny scale of 10. He's good for a chuckle, not a belly laugh and god knows not for something funny enough to make you cry.

I haven't really followed this drama because I don't give much of a rats ass about either of those two. But from what I heard, O'Brien got lower ratings than Leno did when he was the host. So when I hear all this bitching from the O'Brien crowed it sounds a lot like senseless whining.

As far as judging their popularity by their twitter following, that is pretty fucking stupid. All it proves is that O'Brien has a more vocal, sheepish, social network using crowed. The fact that O'Brien wins with the dumb ass twitter crowed makes me want to side with Leno.

"Leno was doing comedy when Conan was in diapers."
I don't know what it's called but Leno was NEVER doing comedy.

Wow, I'm really out of the loop. I haven't watched any late night talk shows in so long, I hadn't heard about this. Personally I agree that Leno should have just retired. He is anything but funny or entertaining. Really NBC should give Late Night back to Conan because Jimmy Fallon sucks. Craig Ferguson blows them all out of the water, though.

1) This hardly represents who is more popular. It represents which crowd uses Twitter.
2) Leno had the best ratings before the move, and as bad as they were after - he still had better ratings than Conan after the move. That's why they asked Conan to take the 30 whole minute later slot to bump Leno off of Prime Time. Because they still felt Conan needed a lead-in due to ratings. Conan may have a loud crowd compared to Leno, but the size of the crowd is what brings ratings and revenue, not the size of the mouth. To boot - Conan WAS offered to keep the Tonight Show, keep the 60 minute airtime (compared to Leno being cut to 30 min), and keep his job and the jobs of all those people he talked about caring for and being responsible for who moved from NY with him-and still get a gigantic payment from NBC for effectivly breaking his contract in doing so still... but instead he laughed at them and rejected the offer which is why there was no counter-offer made. If you did that to your boss they would do the same thing, but without the few days to wrap up your show. I loved Conan before the move, but after he just seemed like an arrogant annoyance trying to fit in among the Hollywood bimbos. I also expected Fallon to completely flop and hated him before this new lineup, but he has shocked me with a great mix of class and boyish humor. And you gotta love the band there too. At this point - I would put Leno back up in his own show running 30 min for a monologue and a few segments + 1 interview. Then give Fallon the Tonight Show (he really has a Johnny Carson feel in a lot of ways-for those of you old enough to know who that is LOL), and give Conan back the Late Night spot where I loved him again... then let Carson go to a new network and let Craig Furgeson take his spot.

This speaks volumes to your ignorance Kevin. Fans of Leno are the 40+ year old crowd who don't know or care about twitter. The ratings spoke volumes of where viewers were going when Letterman's ratings went skyrocketing and Conan's plummeted. The 40+ers are the ones who watch the late shows because they aren't playing video games on their xBox/ps3/wii. Instead they are sitting in bed looking to get a few giggles before they catch some Zzz's at decent hour so they can go to work the next morning. Conan had the perfect spot to catch the college kids getting ready to pass out before starting the next day of classes. Conan's core audience weren't going to stop playing Halo to watch him and the audience he moved to didn't like his style of comedy so they left and NBC had to hit the reset button to get things back in their favor.

I'd rather watch Leno than Letterman. I'm not a huge fan of either of them though.






Oh yah. I wish he'd get a prime time spot instead of 11:30!

I haven't enjoyed the Tonight Show since Johnny Carson ran it. I never liked Jay Leno (except for in standup comedy) and I think Conan needs to ditch his lame skits to save his own life. I mean come on, what was up with that horse on one of his last Tonight Shows? I like Conan until it comes to these skits.

lol so the fact that Leno is older than Conan and has therefor been doing comedy for longer is important how? Conan's a genuinely funny person while Leno is restricted to his writers poorly written and predictable jokes.

Yeah, and even way back then he wasn't funny. Eff you Leno. Eff you NBC.

Craig Ferguson is defiantly the funniest of the bunch by a long shot.

Everyone is talking about higher ratings, but let's be clear. Leno had higher ratings according to the outdated Nielson system, which is problematic for a number of reasons.
1. Viewers who participate are aware that they are being monitored, and have been shown to change their viewing patterns accordingly. As a result, the Nielson system has been shown to underreport late night viewership.
2. The Nielson Ratings do not provide a random statistical sample. Only a small fraction of the population is selected, and only those that agree to participate are used as the sample size. There are only 25,000 total American households that participate in the Nielsen daily metered system. Assuming each household averages four family members, CONAN STILL HAS ALMOST 3 TIMES AS MANY FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER, and he’s only been on a few days. 99.97% of American households (read: all of us) have no input into what is actually being watched, which is why Leno has lasted for so long.
4. Nielson ratings do not take into account internet viewership. Though NBC posted full episodes online, internet viewers, like myself, were not accounted for. (Though we did sit through the ads.)
Twitter, on the other hand, offers a much larger and more diverse sample size. (75 million users) Anyone can create an account, even those who have not been selected by a panel of marketing morons. Though many derisive comments has been made about twitter users being young, twitter is easy to operate, user friendly, and unintimidating to older users. My grandfather has an account. In any case, the young audience is the coveted market, whether you like it or not. The older audience is shrinking, and people my age do not, and WILL not, watch Leno.
Face it. Conan is more popular. NBC made a mistake.

EDIT: derisive comments have been made