Talk about vindication. Conan O’Brien’s first night on the job brought in boffo ratings for the basic cable network. Roughly 4.2 million viewers tuned in to watch “Conan” on TBS. Not only did in bring huge numbers, but it delivered a median age of 30. Those are the kind of numbers, executives love to see. The premiere easily beat out his competitors including “The Late Show with David Letterman“, “The Tonight Show“, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report“. It also gave a huge lead-in to “Lopez Tonight”, probably giving that show it’s highest numbers ever. President of Turner Entertainment Networks released the following statement:

“Conan’s audience has been very vocal online, and he clearly made a smooth transition from Twitter to TBS.. Conan delivered an extraordinary audience and stands out as the youngest talk show on television.”

I’m 100% certain sometime this morning Conan and his crew were having mimosas to celebrate their victory. On the flip side, somewhere in LA, Jay Leno and NBC execs were drowning their sorrows in some greasy Denny’s breakfast. Conan’s first guests on his new show were Seth Rogen, “Glee’s” Lea Michele with musical guest Jack White. Tonight, Conan will welcome guests Tom Hanks, Jack McBrayer and Soundgarden. Upcoming guests include Jon Hamm, Fistful of Mercy and Charlyne Yi on Wednesday; and Michael Cera, Julie Bowen and Jon Dore on Thursday.

watch his monologue after the jump

WOW! That’s a pretty big feat for a new show, even though it is a remake – the most DVR’d show of all time. “Hawaii Five-O” sets a new industry record after an additional 3.374 million people watched the very first episode within a week of its September 20th broadcast. This gets added to the 14.213 million people who had watched the “Hawaii Five-O” unveiling the first Monday of the season, bringing the total to 17.587 million viewers. Aloha!

The Nielsen Ratings are now going by “Live+7” stats, which the TV industry has agreed should be the stats that go into the record books, considering the DVR age in which we live. According to the Washington Post, CBS research chief David Poltrack puts it this way “if everyone in Chicago — the country’s third-largest city, behind only New York and Los Angeles — had all agreed to watch the cop show’s debut via DVR.”

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Score one for the fledgling Peacock network. Once all final numbers were tabulated, NBC’s coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics attracted over 190 million viewers. It was enough to become the second most-watched Winter Olympics in history, only surpassed by the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics which featured the infamous Nancy Kerrigan / Tonya Harding showdown.

With it’s close proximity to the United States, the Vancouver locale enabled the network to air events live or with very little time delay. What’s surprising about the ratings is that the 2010 coverage even beat the 2002 Salt Lake City hometown telecast. No doubt that the North American countries doing so well in the medals race helped garner interest in both countries. Capping the two week event with a historic US vs Canada Hockey final, was so perfect you couldn’t have planned it any better even if you had scripted it.

NBC receives numerous negative reviews over its closing ceremonies coverage

With the advent and prevalence of online viewing and DVR/PVR usage, traditional methods of promoting products through commercials have lost their impact. Since then, both companies and network executives had to come up with new ways of selling their products- enter product placements. As each year passes, the number of in-your-face product placements have gotten ridiculously out of hand. Sure, sometime it works but other times it’s so awkward it detracts from the actual story being told- especially with scripted series.

So who’s the biggest offender SLASH pimp? Surprisingly, even with those coke bottles conveniently placed on the judges tables and cheesy Ford group numbers, American Idol isn’t number one this year. In fact, they’re at a distant fourth place. Proving his foray into primetime isn’t a complete failure, Jay Leno stands atop everyone when it comes to this competition.

According to Nielsen’s ratings which takes into account both intentional plugs and “accidental” brand appearances, The Jay Leno Show reigns supreme. Nielsen clock’s Jay’s show with over 1,015 product mentions, giving him a substantial lead over 2nd place “WWE Monday Night Raw” with 787 mentions. Rounding out the top three is another NBC show “The Biggest Loser” with 704 offenses.

find out rounds out the top 10 after the jump