I’m sure he lost more than a few viewers when he declared MSNBC’s pompous elitist Rachel Maddow “the smartest person in all of journalism.”

Via Variety:

He’s a little more than six months away from passing the “Tonight Show” baton — again — but Jay Leno is very much still on his game ratings-wise.

In Nielsen numbers for the second quarter of this year, NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” was easily the top-rated hour in latenight. ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” ranked second in key demos for a second straight quarter in its new, earlier timeslot and remains the youngest-skewing of the 11:35 p.m. talkshows.

Letterman’s “Late Show” on CBS, meanwhile, continues to head in the opposite direction and logged one of its weakest quarterly performances on record. The program was down from last year in virtually every category except adults 50 and older.

Overall, NBC remains dominant in latenight, with “Tonight Show” and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” winning all four half-hours from 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. in all 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 demos as well as total viewers. Leno and Fallon beat their CBS competition head to head by their largest margins in four years.

Nielsen estimates that Leno, who will wrap his second stint as host of “The Tonight Show” in mid-winter, averaged 1.08 million adults 18-49 for the April 1-June 30 second quarter — up  8% from last year. “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (885,000 viewers in the demo) ranked second and was up 25% from its average in a later timeslot last year, while “Late Show with David Letterman” slid 13% to 777,000.

HT: Newsbusters