Jimmy Kimmel isn’t worth the problem for ABC.
Last Thursday, Kimmel ran a skit parodying the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, mocking First Lady Melania Trump for a “glow like an expectant widow.” Two days later, the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was interrupted by a suspected assassination attempt.
On Monday, both the president and first lady posted about Kimmel’s remarks on social media.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy. His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America,” Melania Trump posted on X.
“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible television ratings, made a statement on his show that is really shocking,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Kimmel is a late-night comedian, at least in name. We support a comedian’s right to make jokes about the people in power. That said, a network also reserves the right to judge a so-called comedian for the quality and business implications of their jokes.
And therein lies the concern.
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Jimmy Kimmel isn’t funny. He hasn’t been funny since Trump came down the escalator in 2015. Now he comes off as bitter, smug and sickly partisan.
Despite the heavy news cycle, his show is less popular now than at any time before. In March, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” lost 5% of its total viewership and 13% of its audience in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 age demographic. Kimmel once again ranked third in viewership for the month (2.17 million viewers), behind Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” (3.53 million) and the soon-to-be-canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS (2.40 million).
Considering that Colbert’s show lost around $40 million a year, it’s hard to see how ABC can turn a profit on Kimmel’s programming, given its low ratings and large budget.
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For reference, in 2024, the four late-night shows across CBS, NBC and ABC combined for just $220 million in ad revenue. In 2018, they generated $439 million. That’s a 50% drop in just seven years.
Jimmy Kimmel and his supporters will call the idea of ABC dismissing him an attack on free speech and proof of a fascist administration. In reality, it’s just business.
Kimmel costs ABC more than he’s worth. He is a headache without much upside. His humor is far more hateful than clever at this point.
He also seems to have a strange fixation on death, whether it’s joking about shooting Trump or the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which led to his suspension last year.
ABC doesn’t need to care that he feuds with Trump. That comes with the job. But it should care that its highly paid late-night host is only relevant when he jokes about people shooting his political foes.
His “jokes” are distasteful and contribute to the political divide that has clearly radicalized the American left and downplayed its fascination with political violence.
And no one knows all of this better than the executives at ABC. Despite its obvious political leanings, the network must know Jimmy Kimmel isn’t worth it anymore.
