Greg Gutfeld Lifted ‘Tonight Show’ Ratings To Yearly Highs As He Shot The Breeze With Jimmy Fallon

Greg Gutfeld’s first appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” brought in the show’s largest audience of 2025, attracting 1.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Gutfeld, normally seen on Fox News, made his first late-night crossover onto Fallon’s show Thursday to discuss Gutfeld’s past works. Data from Nielsen Media Research shows Gutfeld’s episode with Fallon “boosted the show to its highest-rated program” for the year since November 2024.

According to the data, “The Tonight Show” on Thursday increased viewership by double digits, averaging 1.7 million viewers — up an estimated 57% — and attracted 294,000 viewers aged 25-54, a 13% increase from the 2025 average. The interview is also the most-watched guest segment from last week on the show’s YouTube channel, bringing in 974,025 views as of Tuesday evening.

New data from July shows Gutfeld’s show on Fox News continues to dominate its time slot in the second quarter, leading with an estimated average 3.29 million viewers and about 238,000 in the 18-49 range, according to Late Nighter. Compared to the same period last year, Gutfeld is the only show to grow in both key metrics, jumping 31.5% in total viewers and 24% among viewers in the demo.

Comparatively, Fallon’s Q2 average was an estimated 1.19 million viewers, with 157,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo, Late Nighter reported. (RELATED: No, I’m Serious. Can’t We All Be Like Jimmy Fallon?)

During his appearance on Fallon, the Fox host recalled a time when Fallon wrestled him inside a bar. As Gutfeld put it, the two were both “wasted” at an “illegal speakeasy.”

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“I walk into this bar, and I’m with my friend Andy. We just got off shooting something, and I look around and go ‘What the hell have I got  into?’ And then I see you, and you look at me and you have your eyes kind of explode. And then you run towards me, and you tackle me like a giant golden retriever. You’re on top of me, and so we’re wrestling, and then you change, and you start wrestling my buddy Andy,” Gutfeld said.

The media lashed out at Fallon for putting Gutfeld on his show.

Late night hosts aren’t faring as well as they did in past decades. On July 17, CBS announced it would cancel Colbert’s “The Late Show” after its upcoming season.

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