CNN News Central host Sara Sidner said late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel thanked President Donald Trump for “the ratings boost,” and data analyst Harry Enten revealed Trump really did deliver for Kimmel.
“This is huge. Absolutely huge,” said Enten. “… Let's take a look at YouTube views of Jimmy Kimmel live video views. The six-month median only gets 240,000. But Tuesday night's monologue already has 6.7 million. That's over 25 times as large as the median Jimmy Kimmel video normally gets. … So if Donald Trump's idea was to give Jimmy Kimmel more press and more viewership, he absolutely did — but I don't think that is what Donald Trump intended to do.”
Real world ratings on viewership were not available to CNN reporters by Wednesday morning, but Enten was able to get a grasp of the number of new viewers likely tuning in to Kimmel after Trump officials pressured Disney to remove Kimmel for making light of Trump’s sincerity over the assassination of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk.
“Take a look here at record high Google searches last night for ‘What time is Jimmy Kimmel on?’ You wouldn't have to check what time Kimmel was on if you were a regular viewer. The reason that people were checking what time Kimmel was on is because he was potentially pulling in a lot of viewers who normally don’t watch — and get this, it was up over 10,000 percent,” said Enten. “My goodness gracious.”
The numbers were high all the way back since 2004, since Kimmel was first on the air, said Enten.
“So no, it was not just on YouTube,” Enen said. “There was a ton of interest. What we're talking about is nationwide, worldwide interest in terms of what time was Kimmel is on, because I don't normally watch him, but maybe I want to take a gander because maybe I'm interested to hear what he has to say.’”
Sidner asked Enten if Disney got anything good out of its decision to return Kimmel to the air, and Enten revealed the numbers improved immediately for subscription services.
“There were a lot of people, especially on the left, who are upset at Disney for suspending Jimmy Kimmel, and we saw Google searches for boycotting Disney and canceling Disney Plus go way up last week," Enten said. "But … Google searches versus last week's peak on ‘Boycott Disney’ were down about 75 percent as of last night.”
A similar 75 percent drop applied to people searching Google for how to cancel Disney Plus.
“So, the bottom line is this was great for Jimmy Kimmel in terms of what we see so far in YouTube and it's probably going to translate to the ratings," Enten said. "And also Jimmy Kimmel's return is good for Disney because all of a sudden people aren't so interested in boycotting them or canceling their subscription.”