The much-anticipated episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following the comedian’s return from his suspension drew a broadcast audience about four times larger than average, according to Nielsen ratings data. This was despite the late-night show being preempted by about a quarter of all ABC affiliate TV stations in the U.S.
Tuesday’s show drew an estimated 6.26 million total broadcast viewers, Disney said in a news release Wednesday, per numbers compiled by Nielsen, an audience measurement firm. The data does not include those who watched the episode on streaming platforms.
For comparison, according to numbers provided to CBS News by a Disney spokesperson, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.42 million broadcast viewers during its 2024-25 season, less than a quarter of what it saw on Tuesday night.
Tuesday’s broadcast also drew an 0.87 rating in the coveted demographic of adults ages 18 to 49, Disney said, the highest for a single episode of Kimmel’s show since March of 2015. The show averaged an 0.13 rating for that age group last season, Disney said.
Kimmel’s monologue also drew more than 26 million views on YouTube and other social platforms, according to Disney which owns ABC. In it, he showed a video clip of President Trump criticising the show, saying it “had no ratings.”
The host responded: “Well, I do tonight.”
The late-night show was temporarily preempted last week following comments Kimmel made during a Sept. 15 monologue regarding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said at the time.
In a Sept. 17 interview, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s remarks “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and said there was a “path forward for suspension over this.” Within hours of Carr’s comments, two major station owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they were preempting Kimmel’s show indefinitely from their affiliates, while ABC also announced that it was “indefinitely” suspending the show.
Nexstar has a deal pending to purchase fellow station operator Tegna for $6.2 billion, and needs the FCC’s approval for it to go through.
While ABC announced Monday that it had made the decision to bring Kimmel back to the airwaves, both Nexstar and Sinclair said this week that the show will continue to be preempted indefinitely.
Nexstar said it is “continuing to evaluate the status” of the show. It operates 33 ABC affiliates, while Sinclair runs 38 ABC stations. According to Disney, the two media companies account for ABC stations in about 23% of the U.S. market, including in large cities such as Nashville and Seattle.
In his monologue Tuesday, while he did not issue a blanket apology over his comments, Kimmel said that “it’s important to me as a human, and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”
In a Sept. 17 Truth Social post following Kimmel’s suspension, Mr. Trump — who has railed against late-night hosts for years going back to his first administration, and has specifically criticized their ratings — wrote on Truth Social that “the “ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.”
Before the show aired Tuesday, Mr. Trump again took to social media to write that “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!”
Aimee Picchi
contributed to this report.
