{"id":79788,"date":"2025-08-19T11:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T11:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79788\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T11:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T11:29:10","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-blasts-nonsensical-reports-about-stephen-colberts-show-losing-40-million-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79788\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel blasts \u2018nonsensical\u2019 reports about Stephen Colbert\u2019s show losing $40 million a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> is defending fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert<\/a> from \u201cnonsensical\u201d claims that his Late Show was costing CBS millions annually.<\/a><\/p>\n

Following CBS\u2019s controversial decision to axe The Late Show<\/a>, reports emerged that the program allegedly lost the network $40 million each year.<\/p>\n

However, Kimmel isn\u2019t buying those findings, telling Variety<\/a> that they are \u201cbeyond nonsensical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows \u2014 I don\u2019t know who they are, but I do know they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about,\u201d the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host argued. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions \u2014 probably in total billions \u2014 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"JimmyJimmy Kimmel (left) defended Stephen Colbert (right) from ‘nonsensical’ reports that claimed his late night show lost CBS $40 million annually (Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just not a snowball\u2019s chance in hell that that\u2019s anywhere near accurate,\u201d Kimmel declared. \u201cEven that \u2014 that\u2019s all you need to know. Suddenly he\u2019s losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren\u2019t making any money \u2014 and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now. Who knows what\u2019s true? All I know is they keep paying us \u2014 and that\u2019s kind of all you need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, CBS announced it would be doing away with its long-running Late Night franchise, insisting the move was a purely \u201cfinancial decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

While others, including Colbert\u2019s Late Night predecessor David Letterman<\/a>, have voiced skepticism toward CBS\u2019s reasoning, former late-night host Samantha Bee has disagreed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese legacy shows are haemorrhaging money with no real end to that \u2014 in sight, people are just not tuning in,\u201d Bee said on a July 30 appearance on the Breaking Bread with Tom Papa podcast. <\/p>\n

Despite finding the cancellation \u201cawful,\u201d she said: \u201cPeople are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they actually don\u2019t necessarily need a recap of the day\u2019s events. They\u2019re very well-versed in what has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked his opinion about the supposed death of late-night television, Kimmel hit back, asserting that even though, without question, \u201cnetwork television is declining,\u201d more people are \u201cwatching late-night television than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are still watching late-night \u2014 just in different places,\u201d he said, listing late-night\u2019s significant reach on Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the idea that late-night is dead is simply untrue,\u201d Kimmel added. \u201cPeople just aren\u2019t watching it on network television in the numbers they used to \u2014 or live, for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cSo the advertising model may be dying, but late-night television is the opposite. If you look at streaming numbers \u2014 how many streaming shows get 10 million views a week? Twenty million? Very few.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if you really look at how people are watching these shows, and the numbers, it\u2019s right up there with the top shows on Netflix and Hulu. Yet in the media, you\u2019d think this is a rotting corpse \u2014 which it most certainly is not. It just doesn\u2019t add up. It\u2019s a great storyline for the press, but it\u2019s simply not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the interview, Kimmel said he will be casting his vote for Colbert to win the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series at the September award ceremony.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like voting for Stephen is the least we could do at this point, and I think it will be a nice statement if he does win,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, awards don\u2019t mean much, but every once in a while they do, and in this case, I think it will. So I fully expect Stephen to win the Emmy as I think people are very, very upset about what happened to him and his show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Praising Colbert\u2019s character, Kimmel said: \u201cHe\u2019s not just a sweet man. He is very moral \u2014 he\u2019s a very ethical person. He is the salt of the earth. He is a humble person and an extremely smart person. I hope that whatever he does next is even more powerful than what he\u2019d been doing. And I think that\u2019s very possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-79788","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-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79788","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=79788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}