The return of Jimmy Kimmel Live! from an ABC-imposed suspension drew a big audience Tuesday night — the show’s largest in years.
Despite not airing in about 23 percent of the country’s TV homes — due to blackouts at 66 ABC affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair — Tuesday’s episode drew 6.26 million viewers, based on preliminary Nielsen figures. That’s more than three times higher than the show’s average for the second quarter of 2025, when Kimmel was last the everyday host (he takes most of the summer off, with guest hosts filling in).
From April to June, which included the first week of Kimmel’s annual summer break, Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged 1.77 million viewers over seven days of viewing (not including streaming), including the Nexstar and Sinclair stations that are now holding back the show.
ABC also posted the first 28 minutes of Tuesday’s show to YouTube shortly after they aired; as of publication time, the video had surpassed 15 million views (YouTube counts 30 seconds of or more of a video playing as a view), a record for a Kimmel monologue. Including other social media platforms, ABC says the monologue has gathered 26 million views.
In an 18-minute monologue that opened Tuesday’s show, Kimmel was contrite about the remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killer that got him suspended — “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 said in part — and expressed gratitude for the groundswell of support from across the political spectrum for his right to speak on the show without the threat of government interference. He also called threats from Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr to investigate stations airing the show “un-American” and had harsh words for President Donald Trump, who has frequently said he would like to see Kimmel’s show off the air.
“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,” Kimmel said. “He was somehow able to squeeze [Stephen] Colbert out of CBS, then he turned his sights on me, and now he’s 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.”
The ratings surge for Kimmel mirrors that of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert following CBS’ announcement that it would end the show in 2026. Colbert’s first week of new shows after the July announcement averaged 3.06 million viewers over three days (again, not including streaming), 27 percent higher than the prior week.
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