It took Stephen Colbert’s James Talarico interview six months to rack up 9.637 million views on YouTube.
Jimmy Kimmel’s interview just passed it in less than four days.
Kimmel’s 21-minute sit-down with the Texas Democratic Senate candidate crossed the total amassed by Talarico’s February appearance with Colbert on Monday, less than 96 hours after it was posted to YouTube.
Talarico’s sit-down is now Kimmel’s most-watched interview on YouTube in two years.
The latest milestone adds another layer of déjà vu to Talarico’s unusual year in late night.
Back in February, Stephen Colbert revealed that CBS lawyers had pulled his interview with the then-Democratic primary candidate amid concerns over FCC equal-time rules. Colbert posted the conversation to YouTube instead.
The resulting controversy turned what otherwise might have been a relatively routine political interview into Colbert’s most-watched interview on YouTube in more than three years. Talarico’s campaign said it raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after the story broke.
Six months later, nearly the same thing happened again.
Kimmel announced last Wednesday that his own Talarico interview would not air on ABC, saying he wanted to protect local affiliates—particularly those in Texas—from potential equal-time claims under new FCC guidance scrutinizing candidate appearances on late-night and daytime talk shows.
Instead, Kimmel posted the interview Thursday night under the title, “Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You To See.”
The views came quickly. The clip topped 5 million in its first 24 hours, passed 8 million over the weekend, and has now overtaken the Colbert interview that helped turn Talarico into a national political figure earlier this year.
It has also become part of a renewed fight over what prompted both interviews to wind up online in the first place.
FCC chair Brendan Carr weighed in Saturday, accusing Talarico of running “the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations.”
Carr says enforcing equal-time rules means more speech, not less. But as Kimmel noted last week, late-night candidate interviews had long operated under FCC precedent that allowed qualifying programs to claim a “bona fide news interview” exemption. In January, the FCC warned broadcasters not to assume current talk shows still qualify.
Whatever the disagreement over how the interview wound up on YouTube, its audience has now surpassed the first Talarico late-night interview that took the same route—and the views keep coming.
