The second half of September was an eventful time for Jimmy Kimmel, to say the very least. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled off the air by ABC after media group Nexstar announced that episodes would be preempted, resulting in uproar from viewers and celebrities alike. The talk show was finally brought back to the airwaves on Tuesday, September 23 in the 2025 TV schedule, and the episode resulted in some very impressive ratings that made certain parts of his first monologue back even funnier.
Ratings For Jimmy Kimmel Live’s Return To Late Night
It was always a safe bet that the September 23 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! would reach a large audience, with non-regular viewers expected to tune in out of curiosity and/or support after Jimmy Kimmel had spent nearly a week off the air due to the suspension. According to. ABC, Kimmel’s first episode back reached an audience of 6.26 million total viewers in Live+Same calculations, with an 0.87 rating in the key 18-49 age demographic. That 0.87 marks the talk show’s highest-rated regularly scheduled episode since March 2015.
Considering that the show was still preempted in markets including Seattle, St. Louis, and New Orleans (to name just a few), those numbers are missing potential viewers across 23% of households in the United States. The day after, the monologue had accumulated 26 million views across social media and YouTube. At the time of writing, the monologue has been viewed more than 22.2 million times on YouTube alone.
Suffice it to say that plenty of people tuned in, and I’m curious to learn if Kimmel’s ratings will remain higher than they were before his suspension. As of September 26, the preemptions by media groups Nexstar and Sinclair were confirmed to be ending, so the entire market should have access by next week. And dang it, Kimmel himself predicted the rocketing ratings in his monologue on Tuesday night.
Jimmy Kimmel’s Monologue Jokes About Ratings
I have to give credit to Jimmy Kimmel and the writers for his show, because I feel that his first monologue back struck the right balance between emotion and humor. Kimmel thanked many people, including fellow late night hosts who spoke up in support of him. Then, after the episode played a clip of President Trump claiming that Kimmel “had no ratings,” the host said “Well, I do tonight.” Kimmel continued:
You almost have to feel sorry for him. He tried his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly.
Kimmel went on to address the “conditions” for his return to the air, then cracked a joke about Disney wanting people to “reactivate your Disney+ and Hulu accounts” after a slew of cancellations from those with Disney+ subscriptions in the previous days. In a fun twist, Stephen Colbert over on The Late Show – which airs at the same time on CBS that Jimmy Kimmel Live! does on ABC – said this in his own monologue that night:
I’m gonna say thanks to everybody watching in here and to everybody watching from home, who I think might just be my wife Evie because everybody else is probably watching ABC, because tonight Jimmy Kimmel returns to the airwaves.
Since The Late Show pre-tapes and Kimmel records live, it’s actually possible that Stephen Colbert was watching the ABC broadcast live along with the other 6+ million people! All in all, I’d say that Kimmel had a triumphant return to television with a pretty great monologue that ran for almost a full half hour.
Colbert’s The Late Show has still been cancelled, but Jimmy Kimmel Live! seems to be safe for the time being, as well as The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers over on NBC. If you want to see more of Kimmel, you can find episodes of his show on weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
