James Corden has Carpool Karaoke. Jimmy Fallon has his Lip Sync Battles and cheap celebrity games. Jimmy Kimmel has Mean Tweets and that never-ending thing with Matt Damon.
But somehow Stephen Colbert has trumped his viral-y rivals to become the most streamed late night host on TV, The Daily Beast reports, citing statistics from US analytics firm Jumpshot.
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And "Trumped" may be the keyword.
According to the figures, Colbert's coverage of this year's US election – which began with his trip to the Republican National Convention in July, and peaked with his former Daily Show boss Jon Stewart's unshaven return to political commentary – earned the host the bulk of his online views; which counted streaming on the networks' own websites, as well as YouTube views.
His show ended up taking in 21 per cent of the global streaming traffic for late night; Trevor Noah's The Daily Show was next best at 17 per cent; while Jimmy Fallon, last year's leader, dropped to third with 15 per cent of the share, according to the stats.
Of the others, John Oliver scored 14 per cent; Corden had 9 per cent; Conan O'Brien and Kimmel earned 6 per cent a piece; and relative newcomers Samantha Bee and Seth Myers earned 4 per cent of the late night pie.
While Fallon continued his usual crowd-pleasing antics, with videos of the host doing karaoke with Demi Lovato and lip-syncing with Melissa McCarthy among his most-viewed of the year, earning 35 million and 21 million views respectively, and Corden owning YouTube with his top-rating, 138 million-viewed Carpool Karaoke with Adele, Trevor Noah's climb as Daily Show anchor might be the other most intriguing story in the findings.
![What not us? Late night TV hosts (from left) Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and James Corden.](/web/20161213095353im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/a/4/1/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt9ury.png/1481602396132.jpg)
The South African comedian, who's experienced more than 12 months of awkward controversy and "Boo, you're no Jon Stewart!" social media comments, earned his first legit viral moment last month, during a biting interview with alt-right commentator Tomi Lahren.
The 20-minute back-and-forth, which saw Noah calmly challenging Lahren's outrageous claims about #BlackLivesMatter, Trump, immigration and racial politics, has been viewed over 3.7 million times since being uploaded on December 1, and was called Noah's "best work ever" by pop culture commentators.
![Daily Show host Trevor Noah.](/web/20161213095353im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/t/v/m/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt9ury.png/1481602396132.jpg)
Thank you for being my guest Tomi. Our goal should be to destroy these "bubbles" not each other. You're always welcome on my show. https://t.co/AairL3cdAy
— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) December 1, 2016
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