Jimmy Kimmel Faces Eye-Popping Budget Cuts to Keep Show Alive as He Learns Americans Just Don't Care About Him Anymore
ABC’s late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel is facing a reckoning, with the network telling him to enact massive budget cuts or face cancellation.
A report from Page Six surfaced last week, quoting an unnamed source familiar with the show and the network claiming that the current season of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be the last.
A network spokesperson disputed this, however, saying, “Any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative.”
Rather than cancel him outright, Disney executives delivered a “stern message” demanding that he cut 20 percent of the budget, according to a Puck News piece published Friday.
Kimmel’s program costs about $100 million to produce, similar to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which CBS cancelled last fall due to poor ratings.
Puck also cited how late-night shows across the board have seen their ad revenue spiral by roughly half over the past several years, from $439 in 2018 to $221 million in 2024.
Kimmel reportedly makes about $15-16 million per year. It will be interesting to see whether he’s willing to give back part of his salary to rescue the show, but even if he did, it wouldn’t change the fact that late-night comedy is dying.
The entertainment world has rapidly changed over the past 20 years. We’re no longer restricted to a handful of cable channels. Consumers have access to thousands of clips, podcasts, shows, movies, streaming series, and more.
Why should Disney pay $100 million so that Kimmel can preach liberal talking points and cry on air when Republicans win elections? After 24 long seasons, it’s become stale, repetitive, and contemptuous of conservatives.
The truth is, many modern late-night hosts like Colbert, Kimmel, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and even Jimmy Fallon have failed the public.
Their mission was to entertain.
Instead, they chose sides and became political lap dogs for the Democratic Party, arrogantly alienating half their audience in the process.
For a group of individuals who constantly praise the former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson as the king of late-night, none of them took his advice about avoiding political discussions.
They jumped right into the fray and have been attacking President Donald Trump for over a decade now. The most pathetic part is that their jokes aren’t even funny.
Kimmel has arguably been the most partisan among his peers, constantly pushing the envelope with hateful content.
Lest we forget, he was taken off the air last year for making absurdly false comments following the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” he said.
Kimmel also accused those in mourning of trying to “score political points” from Kirk’s death. This was hypocrisy of the highest order.
The show was pulled off the air, and everyone thought his days on television were finally done, but he was eventually reinstated after things cooled down.
Kimmel showed his true colors again earlier this year, when he joked that First Lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow,” just two days before an assassination attempt was made against the president during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
More recently, he interviewed liberal darling James Talarico, who is running for the U.S. Senate against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The clip was only aired on YouTube due to Federal Communications Commission guidelines about providing equal time to political candidates.
Instead of being honest with his audience about why the interview wasn’t aired on the television broadcast, Kimmel accused the Trump administration of political persecution.
“Now that [Trump is] president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates [and] our local stations, based on simple traditional editorial decisions — guest bookings, it would seem, [that] they don’t like,” he said.
Given all this, Kimmel still wants to keep his show on life support until after the 2028 presidential election, so he can continue spewing far-left hate while being subsidized by Disney.
The ego is downright sickening.
Whatever the outcome, Kimmel will soon be out of a job with his legacy in tatters, and that moment can’t come fast enough.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
