Jimmy Kimmel didn’t just come back from suspension Tuesday night—he came back with what’s shaping up to be the largest audience of his late-night career.
According to preliminary live-plus-same-day Nielsen numbers provided by ABC, 6.26 million viewers tuned in for Kimmel’s return to Jimmy Kimmel Live! on September 23.
That’s a staggering figure, especially given that more than 20 percent of the country couldn’t even watch the show due to a blackout by two of ABC’s largest affiliate groups.
Notably, the show’s preliminary ratings do not include delayed viewing, out-of-home viewing, streaming sample numbers, or Hulu data. That info will be added in the coming days and is sure to grow the show’s viewer tally.
Still, the episode delivered about four times his Q2 2025 average. In fact, only two other episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! have ranked higher in the live-plus-same-day measure, and both were special editions of the show with highly rated lead-ins: one after the 2014 Oscars and the other after Super Bowl XL in 2006.
The under-50 crowd also showed up in force: more than 1 million in the advertiser-coveted demo. For context, that’s more than double what The Late Show with Stephen Colbert drew in July when Colbert announced CBS was shutting down the franchise.
The buzz was obvious long before Nielsen weighed in. Kimmel’s nearly half-hour monologue—which addressed both his suspension and recent political drama—blew up online, hitting a million YouTube views within an hour, climbing to 10 million overnight, and by Wednesday afternoon had crossed 15 million. (Add in the show’s other social media channels and that number jumps to over 26 million, per ABC.)
As LateNighter reported earlier Wednesday, the host and his show have also picked up millions of new followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok over the last week.
Below is a list of Kimmel’s ten highest-rated episodes to date.
Live+Same-Day Ratings — All Viewers (P2+)
| Rank | Date (Notes) | Avg Viewers (000’s) | Avg Share (%) |
| 1 | 3/2/14 (Post Oscars) | 7,059 | 11.73 |
| 2 | 2/5/06 (Post Super Bowl XL) | 6,332 | 9.90 |
| 3 | 9/23/25 (Post Suspension)* | 6,260 | TBA |
| 4 | 2/22/15 (Post Oscars) | 5,812 | 10.17 |
| 5 | 2/24/13 (Post Oscars) | 5,736 | 9.80 |
| 6 | 2/28/16 (Post Oscars) | 5,446 | 10.46 |
| 7 | 2/26/12 (Post Oscars) | 5,035 | 7.95 |
| 8 | 1/26/03 (Series Premiere: Post Super Bowl XXXVII) | 4,912 | 9.87 |
| 9 | 6/12/17 (NBA Finals) | 4,780 | 5.56 |
| 10 | 3/7/10 (Post Oscars) | 4,778 | 11.32 |
Ratings data © The Nielsen Company, used under license.
I love how all the big numbers except his newest return to wok….look at all the dates…How Long ago was he popular…profitable?