To be clear from the start, nobody from The Tonight Show has publicly come out and said that they’re aping Stephen Colbert’s increased reliance on partisan-skewing schtick to win back viewers.
Indeed, that downward trend in recent weeks played a bigger role in Stephen Colbert’s post-Inauguration streak, which saw him winning the total viewership game for the first time.
But according to Page Six, the creative team behind Jimmy Fallon are feeling the squeeze from not just an upward tick in The Late Show ratings, but an even more sizable dip in The Tonight Show’s own ratings.
(Nobody is that transparent when politics are involved.)