sir conan has officially taken the reigns from 17-year late night king jay leno. and after much hype, he pulled off a smooth transition. although there were some setbacks: o’brien’s new show suffered a few painful reviews. new york post tv critic linda stasi criticized the rotation of “sketch upon sketch” that were at times “painfully unfunny.”

apparently the viewers didn’t quite agree! conan’s tonight show premiered to the highest overnight draw for ‘the tonight show ‘ since 2005. while we won’t know what the exact viewer count was until next week, we do know that he opened with a 7.1 rating/17 share. pretty decent!

conan should be ready, though, for people to pick apart his first year. while monday’s hefty ratings were celebrated, tuesday’s ran with a 30% viewer drop-off. critics of course are already hounding the funny man for the variance in ratings. it’s been two days, people! lay off ‘em. me thinks he’ll do just fine.