ABC says ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ racked up 6.3 million viewers on broadcast in his late-night return

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — The first new episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” since his suspension averaged 6.3 million viewers via traditional television, more than three times the show’s typical TV viewership, even though the show was blacked out in dozens of markets.

In the key advertiser-friendly demographic of viewers ages 18 to 49, the show scored its “highest regularly scheduled episode in over 10 years,” ABC said Wednesday afternoon.

And on YouTube, Kimmel has been gaining more than a million views per hour. Combining ABC, YouTube and social media platforms, Kimmel’s monologue about free speech in America has reached tens of millions of people, and the view counts are still rising.

The preliminary Nielsen ratings, which will grow later once on-demand viewership is calculated, are all the more notable because the Kimmel telecast was not shown on scores of local ABC-affiliated stations.

Two major TV station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, are continuing to preempt the talk show, and those groups have ABC-affiliated stations that reach roughly 23% of American TV households.

Curious viewers in those markets likely turned to YouTube and other streaming platforms to see Kimmel’s nearly 30-minute-long monologue.

The monologue video has been viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube so far, making it Kimmel’s most-viewed monologue of all time on the platform.

Previously, Kimmel’s most-watched YouTube video was the monologue when he tearfully revealed his son Billy’s heart disease eight years ago.

This story has been updated with additional context.

CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister contributed reporting.

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