Nexstar and Sinclair really missed out.
The affiliate groups boycotting Jimmy Kimmel Live! missed airing — and selling ads — on what’s rapidly become Jimmy Kimmel’s most-watched monologue of all time on YouTube.
Kimmel’s return to ABC on Tuesday night (watch the video, below) featured a nearly 30-minute show opening that included the host’s emotional monologue where he thanked those who supported him during his suspension, attempted to clarify his controversial comments about Charlie Kirk and, most of all, passionately defended free speech.
So far, the show’s official YouTube account has clocked the monologue video at 14 million views in just 15 hours. Kimmel has many short clips from his show of sketches and guest interview segments that have racked up tens of millions of clicks over the years, but Tuesday night set a record in terms of Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue videos. The video is still going strong and averaging about 1 million views an hour.
Kimmel previous most-watched opening monologue is from another sober occasion — Kimmel discussing the details of his son’s birth and heart disease from eight years ago (which also has a soon-to-be-surpassed) 14 million views. In second place currently is Kimmel’s break down of the Will Smith Oscars slap from three years ago (13 million views). Other popular monologues include Kimmel discussing the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas (10 million views), and the host reacting to President Trump’s election last November (9 million views).
On ABC, Kimmel typically draws about 1.6 million viewers, but according to The New York Times, the network is expecting to generate far more than that in the official ratings— even with the Nexstar and Sinclair boycotts, which account for roughly 20 percent of the network’s stations.
Kimmel’s monologue is largely being hailed as meeting the moment. While he stopped just short of apologizing for his comments about Kirk — something many on the right were demanding — he attempted to reach out to his detractors by thanking the many conservatives who criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to push him off the air, as well as gave very sincere-sounding praise to Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, and expressed some hope for some measure of increased bipartisan unity in the wake of recent events.
“Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this,” Kimmel said. “I barely paid attention in school. One thing I did learn from from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti American. So I’m glad we have some solidarity on that from the right and left and from those in the middle — like Joe Rogan. Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on … Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want.”
For more, here’s a recap of Kimmel’s comments and a Hollywood Reporter‘s critic’s take on the monologue.
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