In the weeks following the sudden cancellation of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert continues to have one particularly vocal ally in his corner in fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel. Between using his own For Your Consideration billboard to campaign for Colbert to with the Emmy to sparring with President Trump in the press, Kimmel continues to stick his neck out for his friend.
In a new, lengthy interview with Variety discussing Kimmel's four Emmy Award nominations, the veteran late night host once again doubled down on his support for Colbert by addressing a number of topics that have inspired quite a bit of conversation. Naturally, the rumor that Stephen Colbert's The Late Show wasn't making money, or in fact losing money, fired Kimmel up.
Jimmy Kimmel slams The Late Show $40 million loss reports
Variety asked Kimmel on his take on the reports that The Late Show lost CBS around $40 million per year, and he didn't mince words, calling the reports "nonsensical" and elaborating on exactly why from his firsthand experience he doesn't believe those numbers to be true. He claims that these "alleged" insiders" tend to only factor in advertising revenue over affiliate fees.
"I just want to say that the idea that Stephen Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year is 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. 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," Kimmel told Variety.
He's been in this industry for a long time and has seen how the sausage is made. To further back up his belief that Colbert isn't losing $40 million a year for CBS, Kimmel shared an anecdote that when he started hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he had five times the amount of on-the-night viewers than he does now, but he was being told that the show wasn't making money.
By Kimmel's logic, you would assume that the advertising revenue for a show would be far higher when the show receives more viewers. But even now, there are so many different ways to watch the show, whether on streaming services or YouTube. And to Kimmel's other point, the licensing fees from local affiliates are one of the greatest variables at play for late night programming.
"There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate," Kimmel reiterated about the $40 million loss reports. "Who knows what’s true? All I know is they keep paying us — and that’s kind of all you need to know."
Of course, all of this talk about money comes from Paramount's merger with Skydance and the company providing the reason for The Late Show's cancellation to be financial. Most critics and viewers weren't keen to quickly believe that line of reasoning for the cancellation given the political connections to the merger. Kimmel doesn't either, nor does he believe late night is dying.
While he agrees that "network television is declining," he isn't quick to place the blame on late night or to even suggest that it's not currently viably. He points to the performance of late night shows on YouTube and social media as evidence that late night is alive and well and still a major player. He's not about to let anyone call late night a "rotting corpse" or accuse his friend's show of losing millions of dollars when that's the opposite of what he's seeing and has lived as a long-time host.
Stay tuned to Last Night On for more news on Kimmel, Colbert, and late night!