‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ ends with largest ratings in years

David Letterman is now done being a host of late-night television, and as he rides off into the sunset, he can do so with some of the best numbers that “The Late Show” has seen in a solid decade.

The grand finale on Wednesday night ended up drawing a massive 9.3/24 local rating, which is the strongest that he has had in that measure since a 2005 show that “ended” the long-rumored “feud” between Dave and talk-show icon Oprah Winfrey. We don’t really follow local ratings and consider the measure somewhat abstract, so instead of focusing on that, let’s instead give you the important number in the key 18-49 demographic: 2.8.

This rating in the demo is higher than any other show on network TV for the night, and it has a significant lead on both the “Survivor” finale and the end of “Modern Family” for the season. Even with some adjustments likely coming in the finales given all of the overruns that took place here, we imagine that Dave will still reign supreme on this last night. He had more than triple the audience of his rival Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show,” and as publicized Jimmy Kimmel opted to not air a new episode.

For the most part, we really enjoyed Dave’s finale. There is one thing that we were slightly bummed out about when it comes to the “Late Show” farewell, it is the lack of an appearance or even statement from his eventual replacement in Stephen Colbert. Maybe it was a deliberate move by CBS or someone involved to keep the focus more on Dave, but it would have been nice to see either a cameo from his or at least some sort of statement around the time of the show.

If you did miss it, you can read our review of the finale now over at the link here. Also, sign up here to get some further TV updates on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)