Record ratings for Jimmy Kimmel's return despite ABC affiliates refusing to air show

Jimmy Kimmel's return after a near weeklong suspension has resulted in the show’s highest ratings in a decade. 

Disney-owned ABC confirmed the ratings boost, reporting that nearly 6.3 million people tuned in to the broadcast – a figure which does not include viewership from streaming services.  

Typically, Jimmy Kimmel Live! gets about 1.4 to 1.8 million viewers each night on television.  

As is often the case with late-night hosts' monologues, there was a larger audience online, with more than 15 million people watching Kimmel's opening remarks on YouTube by Wednesday evening. ABC says more than 26 million people watched Kimmel's return on social media, including YouTube.

These record numbers come despite the blackouts in many cities like Washington, Seattle, Nashville and St. Louis. Roughly a quarter of ABC stations not airing the show, with Nexstar and Sinclair corporations still refusing to bring Kimmel back.

A spokesman for Nexstar said yesteday that Kimmel will continue to be preempted from its stations while the company evaluates his show.

“We are engaged in productive discussions with executives at the (ABC parent) Walt Disney Co., with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve,” said Nexstar.

And the president they serve, as Kimmel’s suspension has triggered debates over free speech in the US and shown quite to what extent Trump is trying to reshape media as he likes it – ie: without any criticism whatsoever.  

This has attracted the attention of US senators, who said they wanted to investigate the relationship between the affiliates and Trump's administration.

“If Nexstar or Sinclair traded the censorship of a critic of the administration for official acts by the Trump administration, your companies are not only complicit in an alarming trampling of free speech but also risk running afoul of anti-corruption law,” Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Ron Wyden and Chris Van Hollen wrote to the companies.  

Yesterday, another group of senators led by California Democrat Adam Schiff said they wanted to question FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about “implicit threats” made to Disney over Kimmel. 

During Kimmel’s return show, the host said it "was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man". He also accused Carr of "mob tactics" - and satirized Carr and the FCC in a skit featuring Robert De Niro.  

Kimmel also criticised Trump, who was critical of Kimmel’s reinstatement, saying: "Our leader celebrates people losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke,"later adding that Trump’s actions were "un-American". 

For now, it seems that Trump’s plan to use the apparatus of the federal government to pressure companies to reshape the media and public dialogue has spectacularly backfired. Until his next pressure move, that is, as he has openly called for Kimmel’s late-night colleagues Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to also be taken off air.