EXCLUSIVE: Late-night is back and it seems viewers missed it.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! posted its most-watched season premiere in six years for Monday’s return.
But more significantly for Kimmel was the fact that, per Nielsen Live+Same Day numbers, he beat his competition. The ABC show ranked as the night’s number one late-night show in both total viewers and adults 18-49, helped on the east coast by Monday Night Football.
The show recorded 2.27M total viewers, which was 5% above CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was watched by 2.16M and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which was watched by 1.48M.
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In the demo, Kimmel recorded a 0.33 rating, which was above The Tonight Show’s 0.19 and The Late Show’s 0.16.
It’s too early to tell whether it marks a sea change in late-night as Kimmel has recently been the number two show behind The Late Show, but it will be worth watching as the season progresses as Colbert has won the last seven seasons.
Monday’s show also saw Kimmel grow his audience from last year’s season opener by 8% in total viewers (2.11M last year) to score his best opening performance since 2017. It also marked the most-watched telecast of the show on any night since June 2022.
Kimmel had Arnold Schwarzenegger on his first show back in five months and was evidently pleased to be back. “I have been off the air for five months,” he said. “We’ve been gone so long; The Bachelor is now a grandfather.”
He joked that the weirdest thing about being off the air was that when he walked in to a room over the summer “nobody claps”.
“I just want to take a moment to thank our crew and all the union crews for supporting our writers. IATSE, the Teamsters union all refused to cross our picket lines and we owe them for that. Thanks largely to them, it was a big win for the little guy… and a big win for the chubby guy… and the hairy dude, and for the weird girl who doesn’t make eye contact, and for the two potheads in Star Wars t-shirts that are too small for their bodies – and the guy who’s too old to have a ponytail – and the lady whose cats each have their own Instagram page,” he added. “We call them writers and they are all back to work.”
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