Greg Gutfeld, Fox News’s irreverent late-night host and one of television’s most-watched personalities, reportedly delivered NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” its biggest audience of 2025, marking a rare ratings spike for a genre dominated for years by progressive voices.
In his first-ever appearance on Fallon’s program last Thursday, Mr. Gutfeld drew 1.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research — a 57 percent increase over the show’s 2025 average.
The episode also delivered 294,000 viewers in the advertiser-coveted 25-to-54 demographic, up 13 percent.
The boost was enough to make the broadcast the show’s highest-rated since November 2024. On YouTube, the Gutfeld segment became the most-watched guest appearance of the week, garnering 974,025 views by Tuesday evening.
For Fallon, whose audience numbers have lagged in the fiercely competitive late-night field, the appearance highlighted what can happen when booking talent from outside the usual liberal circuit.
Yet the decision to feature Mr. Gutfeld — a sharp critic of mainstream media and a frequent target of left-leaning commentators — drew predictable backlash from some media figures, who objected to giving him the platform.
Gutfeld, whose satirical Fox News program regularly leads its time slot, remains the only late-night host to post audience gains in the past year.
In the second quarter of 2025, his show averaged 3.29 million viewers, up 31.5 percent from last year, and drew 238,000 viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic, a 24 percent increase, according to Late Nighter.
The numbers stand in sharp contrast to Fallon’s Q2 averages — 1.19 million viewers, with 157,000 in the younger demographic — and to the broader decline of traditional late-night television.
CBS recently announced that “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, a flagship for liberal comedy, would be canceled after its upcoming season, a striking reversal for a program that once topped the field.
During his segment with Fallon, Mr. Gutfeld recounted a lighthearted — and slightly chaotic — encounter with the host years earlier. “I walk into this bar, and I’m with my friend Andy,” he told Fallon. “We just got off shooting something, and I look around and go, ‘What the hell have I got into?’ And then I see you, and you look at me and your eyes kind of explode. And then you run towards me, and you tackle me like a giant golden retriever.” The wrestling match, which ended with Fallon turning his attention to Gutfeld’s friend, took place at what Gutfeld described as an “illegal speakeasy,” with both men “wasted.”
While the story played for laughs, the bigger punchline may have been the ratings. In an industry where political uniformity has often narrowed audience appeal, Gutfeld’s crossover demonstrated the potential — and risks — of breaking from the late-night echo chamber.
The fact that the year’s best “Tonight Show” numbers came courtesy of a Fox News personality suggests that, for all the industry’s ideological resistance, there remains a large, untapped audience for a different kind of late-night conversation.
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