Matt Damon took over Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and fans tuned in to watch the shenanigans, earning the series a ratings bump and probably a fair amount of water-cooler- chatter this morning. Damon's appearance on the late night talk show was cause for excitement all by itself, as Kimmel has been humorously bumping the actor from the show due to time for years. Damon got his revenge last night by "kidnapping" Kimmel and taking over his show, promptly retitling it Jimmy Kimmel Sucks and showing Kimmel all of the support he had by bringing in oodles of A-listers.
On the ratings front, last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live ranked as the top program in late-night in both Households (2.92 rating) and Adults 18-49 (1.23 rating) in Nielsen's 56 Metered Markets. The January 24 episode was the show's biggest yet since it moved to 11:35 p.m. in HH and its second strongest among young adults. Needless to say, the Damon stunt seems to have paid off. And considering even casual fans of Jimmy Kimmel Live are aware of the ongoing Damon joke in the series, it's not especially surprising that people tuned in to see what happened when Damon took the stage. If they were hoping for a lot of Damon and a lot of celebrity guests, I doubt anyone was disappointed, as the episode featured ample quantities of both.
The playlist below begins with a segment from the episode that shows Jimmy Kimmel auditioning for some of Matt Damon's movies. There are other highlights from the episode available as well.
