Interesting article! I do consider the shows to be one hour of fake news, inseparable - but that ratings disparity has been going on since TCR began. At a guess, I'd say that many casual fans never jumped on board for The Colbert Report at all - either TDS is all they need, or maybe they don't like the pundits that Stephen lampoons so they assume they won't like his show either .. or, I don't know. But it's not new. What is new, though, is that Stephen's rating are up since the shows return. I think those numbers are from Monday only, though, which could be the result of both (1) lots of people not watching either show in WGA solidarity or forgetting about it after 2 months and (2) large numbers tuning in to Stephen out of morbid curiosity who might otherwise not have done. I'd be interested to see ratings for the rest of the week.
Ha! Sorry for the tl;dr - I find all of this very interesting, obviously.
I often enjoy the Report more, because as it's all Stephen, it's all pretty much the same tone, whereas on TDS sometimes the correspondent pieces or special sections are just not my cup of tea. I do love everything about Jon, though, and I do usually prefer his interviews to Stephen's, since he doesn't have to filter every question through a character .. I really can't pick, though, I'll have to take the full hour! :D