Jimmy Kimmel is back on the airwaves, and his opening monologue from his Tuesday night return to ABC is already shaping up to be one of his most-watched ever.
The 23-minute YouTube video has racked up more than 11 million views as of Wednesday morning, just more than 12 hours after it was posted. It’s already soared past some of his most popular monologues from years past, including his discussion of the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, which garnered 10M views, and his reaction to Trump’s re-election in November, sitting at 9M.
Tuesday’s video is already Kimmel’s most-watched upload on his entire channel in over a year, since he sat down with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent in March 2024. That video has 16M views as of publication.
There are plenty of videos on Kimmel’s YouTube channel that have amassed tens of millions of views, but typically most of Kimmel’s monologues, specifically, land between 2M-4M views on any given week.
One of his most-watched monologues in recent memory is from eight years ago, when Kimmel opened up about the birth of his second son and the health complications the infant experienced shortly after. That emotional video currently has 14M views.
Given the rate at which Tuesday night’s monologue, in which Kimmel urged strongly against government censorship to several rousing rounds of applause, is making the rounds on the internet, it is quite possible it’ll eventually top that May 2017 video about his son.
None of this is unexpected, and Kimmel even joked about the fact that his ratings were likely to go up as a result of the weeklong debacle that came after ABC indefinitely preempted Jimmy Kimmel Live! following a furor around Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer. Nielsen data for Tuesday’s return episode is not available yet but is expected in the next day or so.
Kimmel’s suspension from the air followed threats from FCC chairman Brendan Carr that ABC should “find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” and said that the comedian’s comments were “some of the sickest conduct possible.” He also called on the local affiliates to take action as well.
On Monday, Carr tried to deny that the comments were a threat to pull licenses of ABC stations, insisting that “did not happen in any way, shape or form.”
Hours after Carr’s initial comments, local station group Nexstar revealed that it would “preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future” as it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk.” It soon was followed by similar comments from rival station group Sinclair. Moments later, Disney made its own decision to pause the show.
Kimmel’s return Tuesday followed days of discussions between Disney and Kimmel as the noise around the suspension grew louder on both sides of the political aisle. Not only did Kimmel receive the support of his late-night peers, but celebrities from across the industry including Mark Ruffalo, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks spoke out against Disney‘s decision.
Even some right-wing politicians such as Ted Cruz — the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the body that has oversight over the FCC — warned against the government curtailing free speech in response to the Kimmel situation.
In his monologue, Kimmel thanked those who stood up for him, including the conservative voices. He also stressed that “this show is not important, what’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
Watch it below.