Nosedive! Jimmy Kimmel's Ratings Plunge to the Bottom of the Ocean After Return From Suspension
(redstate.com)
Embarrassing!
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If it was a ratings boost gimmick then it failed miserably!
Not really, I just looked at the actual numbers. The return night he got around 6.7m viewers. Then the next time he got 2.77 million viewers. That kind of dropoff for a huge episode is expected. For them it's like the superbowl, not all the games do as well as the superbowl.
But, before all this happened he was averaging 1.2 m viewers per episode.
He's doing better than ever ratings-wise.
It's a low bar.
Johnny Carson averaged probably 3 times that for the entire run of his show. And yes, I get it-more competition for viewership these days.
But a closer comparison? Jay Leno averaged double the 2.7 million- 5-6 million-for a full decade. Letterman averaged between 3 and 6 for most of his run.
Jimmy Fallon is currently at about 1.1 nightly. That's about where Kimmel will end up.
Carson did around 5 million a night, sometimes as high as 10 depending on the guest. But, keep in mind this is before YouTube when people couldn't watch clips or anything. Also, this is before social media, streaming, 24 hour news, and all those things so it was very much a captive audience.
Back in the 80s, it was VERY normal for shows to hit 20m a night, hell the Cosby's did 25m per episode. Dukes of Hazzard did 20m per episode.
A LOT more people watched TV back then. Now everyone is watching 100 different streaming platforms.