Jimmy Fallon Grossed 2.6 Billion Views on YouTube This Last Year

Late night talk shows have been the cornerstone of U.S. television for decades, and if viewers aren’t watching the shows as they are broadcast, they are certainly watching the clips on social. One of the titans, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, just hit a huge milestone on YouTube with 20M subscribers. Using data exclusive to Tubular, we took a look at the numbers for the channel overall — the highlights include:

• This channel uploaded 1,872 videos to YouTube in the last 12 months.
• Those videos generated 2.6B views & 43.8M engagements on YouTube.
• 10.2B views were generated on YouTube in the last 365 days by six top late night talk shows.
• The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon generated the most views with 2.6B.
• The Tonight Show generated almost twice the YouTube subscriber growth rate of Colbert & Kimmel in the last 12 months.
• The top 10 most-watched videos on The Tonight Show YouTube channel in the last 12 months generated a combined 797M views.
• The Tonight Show channel is the most-subscribed-to of the late night talk show hosts with 20M on YouTube.

The format of the late night shows dovetails perfectly with social video — sketches and clips intended to entertain broadcast viewers also bring in the big social video views. And why not? It’s perfect snackable content aimed at a varied demographic, and one that reaches an audience far beyond the U.S. border. Social video also offers the audience the convenience of watching those clips at any time, and has proved a hugely-important vehicle for the networks for promotion and audience development. Since Fallon joined The Tonight Show team in February 2014, the show has consistently employed YouTube as a secondary destination for viewers to catch up on broadcast footage, web exclusives, and behind-the-scenes clips.

The Tonight Show Earned 2.6B Views in the Last 12 months

In the last 365 days, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon has uploaded 1,740 videos to its official YouTube channel. Exactly 255 of those videos have attracted over a million views per video, while 44 of the clips generated more than 30M YouTube views each. Let’s take a look at the top 10 most-watched on YT in the past 12 months:

1. Musical Genre Challenge with Ariana Grande (46.2M)
2. Kevin Hart Is Terrified of Robert Irwin’s Animals (26.1M)
3. Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Hart Go Back to High School (21.7M)
4. Ariana Grande Surprises Fans While They Sing “One Last Time” (20.8M)
5. Avengers: Infinity War Cast Sings “The Marvel Bunch” (20.4M)
6. Jack Black Performs His Legendary Sax-A-Boom with The Roots (19M)
7. Cardi B Explains Her Famous Catchphrases (16.9M)
8. BTS Performs “Idol” on The Tonight Show (16.1M)
9. Box of Lies with Cardi B (15.6M)
10. Whisper Challenge Veterans Day Reunion Surprise (15.1M)

As you can see from the list, musical numbers or appearances from musical guests generated the most views, with “Musical Genre Challenge with Ariana Grande” topping the chart with an impressive 46.2M views. Grande makes another appearance at #4, but she’s not the only superstar to make the chart twice. The ubiquitous Cardi B also appears that many times, as does comedian Kevin Hart. What makes great broadcast fodder translates well to social video and I’m sure the executives behind the social strategy are feeding back the numbers to the broadcast team.

Jimmy Fallon Boasts a Global Audience on YouTube

We also took a look at the audience demographics for Jimmy Fallon’s YouTube channel,  and while it may not be a surprise to find that males and females aged 18-34 make up 77% of The Tonight Show’s YouTube audience, just 42.6% of the YouTube audience live in the U.S. This means, of course, that the majority of the channel’s views are from elsewhere — 75 different countries to be precise:

These Are the YouTube Views & Subscriber Growth of Late Night Hosts

Finally, we wanted to compare YouTube views for six popular talk shows for the past 12 months to see where Jimmy Fallon’s channel landed. Of the 10.2B total views generated across these select channels, Fallon’s Tonight Show generated the biggest count with 2.6B — that’s a 25% share of the market!

As for subscriber growth, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon generated almost twice the YouTube subscriber growth rate of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live in the last 12 months. The Late Late Show with James Corden grew by 4.8M, Fallon by 4.6M, Kimmel by 2.9M, Colbert by 2.1M, Conan by 1.2M, and Late Night with Seth Meyers by 817K subscribers.

Last year, we noted Fallon brings in some of the most views across NBC’s overall properties, so it’s exciting to see his channel finally hit 20M subscribers! If you’re a big fan of what NBC does, check out the continued success of The Office YouTube channels.