The New York Times’ TV Decoder blog has last night’s late-night ratings, and for one night anyway, it looks as if David Letterman would have been better off making a deal for his writers not to come back. Jay Leno beat him in the ratings, 5.8 million to 4.7 million viewers, and increased his average [...]

A brief technical note: Tuned In has been upgraded to a new version of its publishing platform–which apparently has a much stronger breed of hamster turning the little wheel that powers it–and as part of the change, we’re now requiring that you register before commenting. I know this is a pain in the ass–it was [...]

Francis Specker/CBS Through the magic of TiVo, I’ve just powered through the rest of last night’s first strike-era late-night (or, in my case, early-to-mid-morning) talk shows. My impressions: Jay Leno: If the return was largely an expectations game, then Jay, working without writers, beat it last night. Did his show make me laugh a lot? [...]

NBC Photo: Paul Drinkwater The late night shows are back! The 2008 election may now officially begin! I’ll have a review of Jay, Dave, Conan et al. later today, once I’ve had a chance to get to them all on Tivo. But tonight was also an important return for another group of celebrities: the presidential [...]