Thanks to the videos he posts to YouTube, Jimmy Kimmel is bringing in between $1 and $2 million in revenue a year, the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Stewart reports.
Kimmel's YouTube presence is made up of eight to 12 clips a day of material that either got cut from the regular show or builds on his most popular skits. His channel has ~314,000 subscribers and 40 million total view, the show told the WSJ — about 230,000 per video.
Stewart writes:
The YouTube notion came in 2008, as Mr. Kimmel noticed that posted clips from his made-up battle with Matt Damon were getting millions of views across the Web. As the core age of late-night TV hovered in the 50s, Mr. Kimmel saw an opportunity to grab a younger audience. "We saw people putting it up [online] and thought, 'We should do this ourselves,'" he said.
And Kimmel's success also seems to be deflating the idea that a web presence would drain away viewers of its TV counterpart: Kimmel's ABC show is the only major late-night program to see a year over year increase in viewership.
Please follow SAI: Media on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- You Probably Know These Huge YouTube Stars
- From Viral Fame To Household Name: The Best Careers Launched By Viral Videos
- YouTube Founder: Facebook's New Features Are Basically A Bunch Of 'Noise'