{"id":233741,"date":"2025-10-23T00:27:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233741\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T00:27:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:27:19","slug":"abc-was-going-to-sign-jon-stewart-for-late-night-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233741\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC Was Going to Sign Jon Stewart for Late Night Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJimmy Kimmel<\/a> was a recent guest on Ted Danson\u2019s \u201cWhere Everybody Knows Your Name<\/a>\u201d podcast and revealed that he nearly lost the job of hosting an ABC late-night talk show to none other than Jon Stewart<\/a>. It was the early 2000s, and Stewart was a few years into his stint as the host of Comedy Central\u2019s \u201cThe Daily Show.\u201d ABC was looking for a late-night replacement for Bill Maher, who had been hosting the half-hour political talk show \u201cPolitically Incorrect\u201d since it moved to the network in 1997.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey wanted a traditional late-night talk show in that slot,\u201d Kimmel said (via The Daily Beast<\/a>). \u201cJon and I have the same manager, James \u2018Baby Doll\u2019 Dixon, and James was about to close this deal for Jon to host the show\u2026 [ABC chairman Lloyd Braun] watched my tape, and he was like, \u2018I think this might be the guy.\u2019 And he brought the tape to Bob Iger, and Iger said, \u2018Yeah, I think this might be the guy.\u2019 It was a very strange thing because [James] was in the difficult position of having to tell Jon, \u2018Uh, you\u2019re not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStewart was already a late-night favorite thanks to \u201cThe Daily Show,\u201d while Kimmel was a lot more untested in the space as the host of Comedy Central\u2019s \u201cThe Man Show.\u201d As Kimmel quipped, \u201cThat was a mistake by the way. They definitely should hire Jon. If I\u2019m in that position, there\u2019s no question I hire John 100 times out of a 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKimmel was so confused over winning the gig over Stewart that he asked Bob Iger about it. As Kimmel remembered: \u201cI said, \u2018What was it, like why\u2014this is quite a leap that you guys made. I was on\u00a0\u2018The Man Show,\u2019 I was doing football picks on Fox NFL Sunday\u2014what was it?\u2019 He goes, \u2018Well, you were cheaper.\u2019 And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn\u2019t kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJimmy Kimmel Live<\/a>!\u201d debuted in 2003, and Kimmel recalled that the early days were rough. \u201cI think my vision of hell is being forced to watch my first year of shows, because it is just as painful as anything could get for me. It took us a long time to figure it out, and we\u2019re very fortunate to get a long time to figure it out.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSomehow we wound up getting good ratings,\u201d he continued. \u201cI still don\u2019t know how that was, but they were good enough to keep us on the air, even though I was causing trouble once every, like two and a half months, some major thing was happening. Something that came out of my mouth, you know, and caused a whole thing. It was just tumultuous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch Kimmel\u2019s full interview on Danson\u2019s podcast in the video below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel was a recent guest on Ted Danson\u2019s \u201cWhere Everybody Knows Your Name\u201d podcast and revealed that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,4625,59932,14744,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-233741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","12":"tag-jimmy-kimmel-live","13":"tag-jon-stewart","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}