Rosie O’Donnell wrapped up her week guest hosting on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to impressive numbers, ranking as the highest-rated summer substitute thus far.
For the week of Aug. 17, O’Donnell averaged a total viewership of 2.17 million and a demo viewership of 237,000 viewers, according to live-plus-three-day viewing figures from Nielsen reported by LateNighter.
O’Donnell’s week of hosting marks the ABC late night show’s most-watched week in both measures since mid-June, before Kimmel tossed the show over to a suite of guest hosts, including Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz and Colman Domingo.
In fact, viewership for O’Donnell’s week of hosting was up in both categories from the week of Aug. 9, which was headed up by Anderson. Total viewership for O’Donnell was up 40% from the previous week, while demo viewership saw a 34% rise.
With that, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” maintained its lead on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” which averaged 1.43 million viewers and 171,000 demo viewers, as well as “Comics Unleashed,” which averaged 654,000 total viewers and 75,000 demo viewers across the same hour.
O’Donnell’s stint hosting also boosted ratings for ABC’s “Nightline” as it picked up at 12:35 a.m. The show averaged 918,000 total viewers – up 11% from the previous week — and 110,000 demo viewers — rising 20% from the previous week.
O’Donnell started her guest hosting week strong. On Monday, Aug. 17, O’Donnell brought in 1.87 million total viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures reported by LateNighter, which marked the biggest audience for any of Kimmel’s guest hosts so far this summer.
Country music artist Jelly Roll took the baton from O’Donnell for the week of Aug. 24. So far, Jelly Roll’s Monday audience landed at 1.07 million viewers, down 11% from the previous Monday when O’Donnell held the stage. Full ratings for Jelly Roll’s week of hosting will be available next week.
