Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returned to air Tuesday night after a brief suspension from ABC parent company Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS). In his return, Kimmel set new high marks for viewership and may have silenced criticism from President Donald Trump over "bad ratings," at least temporarily.
What Happened: The highly anticipated return of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on Tuesday saw strong viewership, based on initial data, even with several regional broadcasters choosing to boycott airing the show.
Initial data from Nielsen shows 6.26 million viewers for Tuesday night's show, as reported by Variety. This marks a 343% increased from the show's previous season average of 1.4 million viewers per episode.
The initial data comes from live and same-day viewership and does not include streaming, meaning it will likely rise when more data is factored in.
Tuesday's episode had a rating of 0.87 among the ages 18-49 demographic, marking the highest rating for the demographic in 10 years.
The episode is the most-watched "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" regular episode according to the report, with specials airing after a Super Bowl and the Academy Awards having higher ratings.
Along with high viewership on ABC, the show also released the monologue from Kimmel's return titled "Jimmy Kimmel is Back" on YouTube. The monologue has 19.96 million views as of the time of writing and is the most-watched monologue from Kimmel on the video platform ever.
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Why It's Important: The strong viewership for Kimmel's return to television was likely somewhat expected, given the demand from many to reinstate the comedian after his suspension, with some consumers cancelling their Disney+ and Hulu streaming plans.
Viewers were also eager to hear what kind of apology, if any, Kimmel would offer up for his past comments about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said he didn't mean to make light of the murder of a young man during his monologue.
The late-night talk show thanked those who have spoken in his defense, including some people who he doesn't always agree, but did so in the name of free speech.
The strong ratings come with Trump suggesting that Kimmel was suspended not due to his comments about Kirk or potential threats from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, but rather due to bad viewership figures.
"Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great man named Charlie Kirk," Trump previously said.
While Kimmel's ratings were down in recent years, the figures after his suspension will be closely followed to see if he can gain support and viewership after the trending event.
Kimmel joked about Trump's comments during his monologue.
"(Trump) tried his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly," Kimmel said.
Kimmel addressed the criticism that Trump and others said the show gets no ratings.
"Well, I do tonight!"
Kimmel's strong viewership might be even more impressive when factoring in that around 23% of U.S. households couldn't watch on ABC. Regional television operators Sinclair Inc (NASDAQ: SBGI) and Nexstar Media Group (NASDAQ: NXST) chose not to air Kimmel's show and are continuing to keep him off their ABC affiliates.
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Photo: Jimmy Kimmel on his show, 9.23.2025; courtesy Disney/Randy Holmes
