Governor Palin may have scored a hard-fought apology from David Letterman for a joke he made about her daughter, but she did little to dent his popularity. Quite the opposite, ratings for the week were up thanks to the controversy, with The Late Show performing better against The Tonight Show than it had in years. Competing with new host Conan O'Brien, Letterman's program had 3.67 million viewers for the week, just 100,000 less than O'Brien's, the closest CBS has come to topping their rival since December 2005.
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