Study of late-night comics leaves out Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert

But if, as he suggested, the center looked at the late-night shows that were “the big players,” it probably ought to have included “The Daily Show,” which, during the study period, averaged 2.267 million people and was the third-most-watched late-night program in the country, behind only Leno’s and Letterman’s shows and well ahead of Kimmel, Fallon and Ferguson.

Ditto year to date.

And, among those younger viewers said to be looking to late-night TV for political news, “The Daily Show” was the No. 1-rated late-night-comic-telling-jokes-about-presidential-candidates show during the study period, with an average of 1.224 million 18-to-49-year-olds. Yes, “The Daily Show” beat Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Fallon and Ferguson.

And, during the period of the study, “The Colbert Report” averaged more young viewers than did Fallon and Ferguson.

Asked about the two Comedy Central shows, Amundson noted that their formats are “more complicated” to dissect than the broadcast networks’ late-night programs.

Drama on ‘X Factor’?

“The X Factor” creator and Supreme Mentor Simon Cowell, looking to gin up a larger audience for his singing competition (which is getting its clock cleaned this fall by NBC’s singing competition, “The Voice”) left open the possibility of a Britney Spears meltdown this week when the show begins its live episodes.

“She’s been a lot better than everybody thought,” Cowell said on a conference call Tuesday afternoon in re Britbrit as one of this season’s new judge/mentors. He added, tantalizingly: “I don’t know what she’s going to be like on a live show.

“I don’t know how she’s going to cope with that [live] part — but I think she’s very excited.”

One reporter on the Tuesday call wanted to know whether Cowell planned to “address” Hurricane Sandy on the show, which, as we noted earlier, is a singing competition.

Cowell was more interested in chastising Americans (he’s a Brit) for their insistence on giving hurricanes “friendly” names.

“ ‘Hurricane Sandy’ — you’d think some nice, friendly thing is coming along. They should be called horrible names, because they kill people. We should start a petition to stop that,” Cowell said, seriously.

One reporter asked Cowell whether he’d extended an invitation to President Obama to appear.

Which, to recap, is still a singing competition.

“They could both come on and duet together,” Simon responded, presumably referring to Obama and his GOP rival, Mitt Romney.

“They can make up their differences, sing a song together,” he continued. “Music is the great healer, and they will be welcome any week to do that.

“Alternatively,” he said, “we will take just one.”

To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, visit washingtonpost.com/tv.