Jimmy Kimmel has spoken out in support of fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert, pushing back against what he called "nonsensical" claims that Colbert's Late Show was draining CBS financially.
The comments follow CBS's much-debated move to cancel "The Late Show," amid reports suggesting the show was costing the network around $40 million annually.
Kimmel dismissed those reports, telling Variety he considered them "beyond nonsensical."
"These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows — I don't know who they are, but I do know they don't know what they're talking about," Kimmel said.
"They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions — probably in total billions — and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows. It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works."
Kimmel made it clear he has no patience for the speculation.
"There's just not a snowball's chance in hell that that's anywhere near accurate," he said. "Even that — that's all you need to know. Suddenly he's losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren't making any money — and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now. Who knows what's true? All I know is they keep paying us — and that's kind of all you need to know."
CBS recently announced it would retire its long-running "Late Show," citing financial concerns. While the explanation has been met with skepticism from several high-profile figures, former host Samantha Bee voiced her support for the network's decision.
"These legacy shows are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that in sight. People are just not tuning in," Bee said on a July 30 appearance on the "Breaking Bread with Tom Papa" podcast.
And while the decision was "awful," Bee said, "People are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they actually don't necessarily need a recap of the day's events. They're very well-versed in what has happened."
When asked about claims that late-night TV is on its way out, Kimmel pushed back, acknowledging that while traditional network viewership may be shrinking, the overall audience for late-night programming is larger than "ever before."
"People are still watching late-night — just in different places," he said, pointing to its strong presence on platforms like Instagram and YouTube as proof that its audience hasn't gone away, but shifted online.
"So the idea that late-night is dead is simply untrue. People just aren't watching it on network television in the numbers they used to — or live, for that matter," Kimmel said.
"So the advertising model may be dying, but late-night television is the opposite. If you look at streaming numbers, how many streaming shows get 10 million views a week? Twenty million? Very few."
He added: "I think if you really look at how people are watching these shows, and the numbers, it's right up there with the top shows on Netflix and Hulu," he continued. "Yet in the media, you'd think this is a rotting corpse — which it most certainly is not. It just doesn't add up. It's a great storyline for the press, but it's simply not true."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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