The return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to ABC on Tuesday was a major moment in history — as the show touted with a supercut of newscasters declaring its significance — and Kimmel has the numbers to prove it.
His 28-minute monologue has reached 17.7 million views on YouTube in 22 hours, making it his most-watched monologue ever on the platform. (On ABC, the episode was Kimmel’s No. 3 of all time.) Previously, the top monologue on YouTube was his 2020 remembrance of Kobe Bryant with just under the same amount, followed by his 2017 announcement of his son’s birth and heart disease with 14.7 million views.
It’s presumable that many of Kimmel’s YouTube viewers came from regions that did not have access to the broadcast on their local ABC stations. Nexstar and Sinclair, which own roughly one-quarter of the country’s ABC stations combined, decided to continue preempting “Jimmy Kimmel Live” despite Disney reinstating the series.
It should be noted that Tuesday’s monologue isn’t the most-watched video on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” page overall; there are currently around 100 interviews, comedy bits and other videos on the show’s page with higher view counts, peaking with 80 million views on a game played by the “Avengers” cast.
Still, given that the video has only been online for one day, and is likely to remain a topic of national discourse for some time, the video will continue accruing viewership, and has certainly outpaced recent monologues by a large factor. For example, the Sept. 16 monologue that led to Kimmel’s suspension reached an usually high 4.4 million views, while his monologues in the weeks before Charlie Kirk’s assassination ranged between 1.8 million and 3.9 million views — totals that have presumably risen significantly over the past week amid the increased attention on Kimmel.
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