Everyone is talking about (and watching) Jimmy Kimmel right now as the late-night host returns to television after ABC suspended his show over his comments about Charlie Kirk.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to air on Tuesday night (September 24) after being suspended since September 17. His return show brought in its largest audience in years, via The Hollywood Reporter.
Keep reading to find out more…
Tuesday’s episode drew 6.26 million viewers, according to the early Nielsen figures and among adults 18-49, Jimmy Kimmel Live! earned a 0.87 rating, representing the show’s highest regularly scheduled episode in over 10 years, since 3/12/15.
In addition to linear ratings, the monologue has garnered more than 26 million views across YouTube and social platforms.
Even though Jimmy has been reinstated to late night, Nexstar and Sinclair are still preempting his show on the 60+ ABC affiliates they own, so the fact that the 57-year-old host was still able to pull in almost 6.3 million viewers despite not being shown in 23% of the country’s homes is impressive.
Before that, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was averaging about 1.77 million viewers (not including streaming) per night, and that was with the Nexstar and Sinclair-owned stations.
The host started the episode with a lengthy monologue in which he expressed his gratitude toward his many supporters and addressed the comments that got him taken off the air, saying, “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.”
He also had some criticism for President Donald Trump, adding, “The president made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here get fired. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”
Jimmy went on to mention the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s show and the fact Trump is now “openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don’t make millions of dollars.”
“I hope that if that happens, or if there’s even a hint of it happening, you’ll be 10 times as loud as you were this week,” he concluded.
Find out which celebrities are not happy that Jimmy is back.
Source: justjared.com