Stephen Colbert's crushing and promising win over his late night rivals with Tuesday's premiere episode was short lived.
Nielsen just released the final live plus same day ratings for Wednesday and Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" has regained the top slot in late night.
Fallon attracted 4.06 million total viewers versus Colbert's 3.66 million viewers. Jimmy Kimmel's "Live" brought up the rear with just 1.85 million viewers.
In the late night key demographic of 25 to 54-year-olds, Fallon earned a 1.6 rating. Colbert and Kimmel got a 1.0 and 0.6, respectively.
It would seem that Fallon's coupling of megastars Justin Timberlake and Ellen DeGeneres was a better draw than Colbert's guests, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and movie actress Scarlett Johansson.
The good news for Colbert is that he's still doing better than Letterman's episodes year-over-year. He's up 70% in total viewers (from 2.15 million) and up 67% in the key demo of Adults 25-54 (from 0.6) for the same night last year, according to a CBS press release.
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