NBC 'Tonight' Show

At this time, none of the US late night talk shows are properly available to watch anywhere on British TV these days.

OK ... "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" can be seen on CNBC Europe, but since that's not a British TV channel and is
only officially available over here via satellite and cable TV, but not on Freeview/ DTT, that doesn't really count.

I still wonder why no one has broadcast one of those chat shows? Or better still done a compilation version which contains the best bits etc.

I still wonder why we don't have a 5 nights aweeks show, broadcasting from London. im sure you could get plenty of guest, from Pinewood, BBC, ITV etc

Several British channels have tried Letterman, Leno, Conan and others through the years but they all go by the wayside after a while. Letterman has been on around half a dozen different channels so far. Leno used to be on Ftn and now on CNBC.

Graham Norton tried a 5 nights a week talk show a few years back on Channel 4 but it didn't last very long.

Admittedly from a cable network, but The Daily Show is available on Comedy Central/Extra again these days.

Fox usually leads in primetime in the commercially relevant age groups, while CBS leads in primetime if you count all viewers.

NBC still leads in late night, but that lead is much narrower than it used to be. I believe NBC also leads in evening and morning news, but its competitors are growing there as well.

Since Today ousted Ann Curry, Good Morning America has been winning more often. The 6.30 News and late-night are the only blocks where NBC is #1, although last autumn they were #1 for primetime in the 18-49 demographic, albeit only for a little while.

Yep, it's been tried lots of times but they never seem to last. I assume that there's just not enough people interested in something that is so of it's time. I like watching them when I'm over there but they just aren't as good outside of the context they were intended for.

I would assume they cost more than a normal import too - they've got to be brought over and prepared for broadcast on the day and such a fast turnaround isn't the sort of thing a lot of channels normally do. They're not really repeatable either.



Yes, and Graham Norton rose to fame from the most famous attempt to do a UK late night nightly talk show - The Jack Docherty Show

The Daily Show has done fairly well over here. Airing on Comedy Central for the last year it was on More4 for 6 years before being dropped so as not to embarrass '10 O'Clock live'.

Wasn't it dropped because C4 fell foul of compliance with it over their use of pictures from the House of Commons - which are strictly protected in the UK? I'm assuming Comedy Central are either complying harder or the production team in the US are aware of the issue?

Although the main reason it was dropped was because of the dire ratings it was getting.

In contrast it's critically over-rated.

Many channels have shown them at various points. They've not found an audience.

With the exception of Craig Ferguson (who at least attempts to subvert the genre a bit) I've usually found them close to unwatchable. They just don't work for a UK audience.



A few attempts have been made (Graham Norton did a daily show for a while, and Channel 5 had Jack Docherty, and before that we had Wogan 3 nights a week) - but the US talkshow format really doesn't appear to appeal to a UK audience.

The nearest we have to a daily chat show is much earlier in the evening - The One Show - and I suspect many watch as much for the pre-recorded inserts as the celebrity guests. (It out-rates every other chat show in the UK usually - certainly beating Norton, Ross etc. as tweeted by Jake Humphrey who is presenting next week : http://pic.twitter.com/k28T5IuFZK )

To be fair, 'The One Show' is in a much better timeslot than all of those.

I'm quite interested in the fact that a lot of people here seem to watch or at least know of Craig Ferguson. Do people here watch him on a regular basis? I watch him pretty much daily. He's one of those hosts that you can watch regardless of the quality of guest.