Seth Meyers’ post-debate “A Closer Look” primetime special drew in a 73% bigger audience than his 2020 entry, TheWrap can exclusively reveal.
The hourlong election special, which aired on Wednesday, Sept. 11 — the day after the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — drew 2.6 million viewers as it aired from 10-11 p.m. ET on NBC, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures.
That’s up 73% from Meyers’ 2020 election special, which aired a half-hour segment in October 2020. The 2024 “A Closer Look” episode also saw an uptick in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49 when compared to four years ago.
The special has been viewed on YouTube over 2 million times, and it’s drawn in more than 5.5 million viewers across social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter).
Broadcasting live from Studio 8G in Rockefeller Center, “Late Night With Seth Meyers” extended its regular “Closer Look” segment into primetime to unpack the debate between Harris and Trump, which aired live from Philadelphia the night prior on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Meyers poked fun at projections that predicted the debate would draw in a bigger audience than the “Seinfeld” series finale in 1998, which ultimately didn’t happen with the ABC News-hosted event scoring 67.14 million viewers — not quite enough to top the finale viewership of 76 million. Still, the host pointed out parallels between the events.
“I mean, Trump’s a germaphobe, pathological liar, total loose cannon, and Harris is, you know, veep,” Meyers joked, putting up graphics of Jerry, George Costanza, Kramer and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for each respective descriptor.
“Late Night With Seth Meyers” is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, and Broadway Video. It is executive produced by Lorne Michaels and produced by Mike Shoemaker.
The special is now streaming on Peacock.
