Was That the Most Watched ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ Ever?

Jimmy Kimmel’s return to television on September 23 after a nearly weeklong production hiatus gave his ABC late-night show its biggest audience ever, with an estimated 6.26 million viewers watching Tuesday night’s telecast, per preliminary national Nielsen data. That number is particularly impressive considering Jimmy Kimmel Live! was not broadcast on ABC stations reaching roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population due to a blackout of the show imposed by Nexstar and Sinclair, two right-leaning TV-station groups with ABC affiliates in dozens of cities, including Seattle and Washington, D.C.

But even with a much smaller potential pool of live TV viewers, Tuesday’s JKL audience was roughly four times larger than what the series averaged during the recently wrapped 2024–25 TV sea