Ratings: Ryan Seacrest wins New Year’s Eve battle, but Carson Daly has best night yet

Who knew that 2013 was going to be the year when Carson Daly started to come a little bit closer to actually being relevant on New Year’s Eve? We’ve given the guy grief at times, but his December 31 show is better than “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” in some ways, at least in that it’s not so forced and firmly-orchestrated. It’s also shorter, so you don’t feel the same sort of massive burnout over the course of the evening.

So even in spite of the holiday falling this year on a Tuesday (which is never good given that some people do actually have to wake up and go into work on New Year’s Day like we do), there were still some good ratings that came in for Carson. Overall, his New Year’s Eve show drew the impressive rating of 1.8. That marks his best performance ever in the 18-49 demographic, and at least put him within two ratings points of Ryan Seacret’s show (which drew a 3.7). For those curious, “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” was down from its best-ever rating last year, but was also up dramatically from the last time the show was on a Tuesday. According to TVbythenumbers, the rating back in 2002 was a 2.7.

For those curious, CBS doesn’t really even bother programming for New Year’s Eve, and just aired repeats that didn’t really do much of anything against the competition of Times Square / people out drinking and doing other things.

While tonight is going to be built up primarily of repeats, tomorrow is going to be one of the first opportunities for some of your favorite shows to be back with new episodes. “The Big Bang Theory” and “Community” are just two of the shows that are going to be back with new episodes, and more will join them the following week.