Which late-night hosts saw the largest audience growth in 2025 and why?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Greg Gutfeld’s Fox News late-night program posted the largest measured audience growth in 2025, showing double-digit year-over-year gains that outpaced broadcast competitors, while CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert recorded modest but notable upticks and momentary surges tied to news events; other staples such as Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers saw smaller, more episodic bumps but no sustained breakout growth on the year [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Gutfeld!: the runaway growth story — numbers and context
Gutfeld! was the clear growth leader in 2025: LateNighter and other trade tallies showed Gutfeld! as the only program to expand its audience across the key metrics year-over-year in Q2, posting roughly +31.5% among total viewers and +24% in the demo compared with the prior year, and industry summaries note the show’s steep climb since its 2021 rebrand [1] [2] [5]. That expansion reflects Fox News’s cable reach and a politically aligned audience that has migrated to opinion-forward late-night formats; trade coverage and analytics firms highlighted Gutfeld!’s dominance in basic cable slots even as broadcast late-night aggregate viewers slipped [1] [5].
2. Colbert: steady performer, amplified by headline events
Stephen Colbert’s Late Show registered modest gains in several monthly and quarterly snapshots — for example a small quarter-to-quarter lift in Q2 and a near-5% month-over-month increase in February — and industry demand metrics continued to place Colbert among the top late-night properties in audience interest [1] [3] [6]. Importantly, Colbert’s abrupt cancellation announcement produced a short-term ratings surge across the landscape, with specific broadcasts and adjacent shows benefitting from heightened attention, an example of how news about a host can temporarily re-concentrate viewers [7].
3. Kimmel and Fallon: episodic boosts, limited sustained growth
Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings picture in 2025 was mixed: his return from a suspension and the associated publicity generated big single-episode audiences and social-video traction, but quarterly averages remained relatively flat year-over-year in the third quarter, showing resilience more than rapid growth [4]. Jimmy Fallon saw small month-to-month upticks at times but overall declines in demo share compared with prior years were still reported, indicating that publicity and guest-driven spikes have not translated into consistent audience gains for the Tonight Show [8] [9].
4. Seth Meyers and the late-late niche: leadership without dramatic gains
Late Night with Seth Meyers continued to lead its 12:37 a.m. slot in total viewers and the demo across multiple reports, confirming a strong, stable core audience that keeps him a ratings leader in the late-late niche even if he did not register the largest year-over-year growth among big-name hosts [1] [8] [9]. Analysts point to the show’s consistent performance as evidence that format and digital clip strategy still reward topical monologues and recurring segments, but available reporting does not credit Meyers with growth on the scale of Gutfeld! [1] [10].
5. Why growth varied: politics, platform strategy, and publicity
The divergent trajectories in 2025 reflect three clear forces reported across the trade press: partisan alignment and cable reach helped Gutfeld! capture year-over-year gains as Fox’s audience consolidated [1] [5]; headline news about hosts — suspensions, returns, or cancellations — produced short-term spikes for Colbert and Kimmel that show how publicity can lift linear ratings and social views simultaneously [4] [7] [10]; and broadcast late-night shows benefited from high-performing social clips even as linear audiences trended down overall, which means measured “growth” depended on whether coverage emphasized Live+7 linear ratings or the exploding social-video totals [10] [1].
6. Limits of the reporting and alternative interpretations
Trade sources rely on Nielsen Live+7 and publisher analytics that emphasize different windows and platforms, so “largest audience growth” depends on the metric chosen: linear live-plus-seven Nielsen figures point to Gutfeld! as the big winner year-over-year, while social-video tallies show multiple broadcast shows enjoying billions of online views that complicate a simple winner-takes-all claim [1] [10]. The industry narratives also contain implicit agendas — outlets focused on cable politics highlight Gutfeld!’s rise, while broadcast-oriented analyses stress Colbert or social reach — so interpretation must account for which metric a source privileges [2] [10].