Social Media: David Letterman vs. Jimmy Fallon vs. Jimmy Kimmel vs. Conan O'Brien vs. John Oliver

I recently came upon an article that said that one of the reasons David Letterman was looking to retire was a realization that he was not keeping up with social media in today's vastly different entertainment market.  The reality is that getting "viral hits" was as important to the success of modern shows than nightly ratings.

I was curious on Letterman's success with social media compared to his contemporaries.  Boy, it is not good.  The following is a chart of David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, and John Oliver videos on YouTube with the indicated number of views. I would also do Jon Stewart, but he lacks a Daily Show specific channel on YouTube.

Views	Letterman	Fallon	Kimmel	O'Brien	Oliver
50M+	0	1	2	0	0
20M-50M	0	23	19	0	0
10M-20M	1	24	16	4	1
5M-10M	0	64	43	22	14
Total Channel Views	155 Million	2.8 Billion	2.0 Billion	1.4 Billion	288 Million

Holy cow! That is awful for Letterman. With the exception of a single video, he doesn't even have any other 5M+ view video on YouTube. It's also worth noting that the video that cracks the 10 million mark is a video released less than two weeks before his last show.

What I find amazing is how Conan O'brien and John Oliver have such better social media audiences on YouTube despite being on basic cable or HBO.  Even their total views blow away Letterman.  Oliver's channel does much better than Letterman's even though he has weekly program while everyone else has nightly programs.  So he is doing more with a much smaller of videos.

Another completely random measurement, number of Twitter Followers for their respective shows and their own personal accounts.  It appears that Letterman only has a twitter for his show and not a personal account.


@letterman: 348K
@jimmyfallon: 25.3 Million
@FallonTonight: 2.63 Million
@jimmykimmel: 5.29 Million
@JimmyKimmelLive: 834K
@ConanObrien: 16.5 Million
@TeamCoco: 588K
@iamjohnoliver: 991K
@LastWeekTonight: 417K


Again, numbers don't look good for Letterman.  He's substantially lower than everyone else.