{"id":234956,"date":"2025-10-23T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234956\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:50:09","slug":"abc-almost-hired-jon-stewart-for-jimmy-kimmels-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234956\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC almost hired Jon Stewart for Jimmy Kimmel’s job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you imagine a universe where it was actually \u201cJon Stewart Live!\u201c? Where it was Stewart, rather than Kimmel, who got pulled off the air at the behest of the government? (Actually, it\u2019s pretty easy to imagine the government pushing Stewart off the air<\/a>. That could still happen in\u00a0our\u00a0universe<\/a>.) On Ted Danson\u2019s podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name (via The Daily Beast<\/a>), Kimmel reveals that, when his show launched in 2003, ABC \u201cwanted a traditional late-night talk show\u201d in the time slot. At the time, Kimmel and Stewart\u2019s mutual manager James \u201cBaby Doll\u201d Dixon \u201cwas about to close this deal for Jon to host the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

But ABC executive Michael Davies flagged Kimmel\u2019s tape to the company\u2019s chairman Lloyd Braun, who brought it to Bob Iger, and all of them agreed Kimmel \u201cmight be the guy.\u201d That put Dixon \u201cin the difficult position of having to tell Jon, \u2018Uh, you\u2019re not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.’\u201d Kimmel joked that it \u201cwas a mistake\u201d: \u201cThey definitely should hire Jon. If I\u2019m in that position, there\u2019s no question I hire Jon 100 times out of a 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

Stewart doesn\u2019t seem to have held a grudge<\/a>. Earlier this month, he appeared on Kimmel\u2019s New York shows, jokingly calling the host \u201cMr. Free Speech\u201d and pretending to be driving Grubhub on the side. \u201cIn case you haven\u2019t heard the news: late-night talk show host, the job security\u2019s not really there right now,\u201d he cracked. Stewart only left the stage after giving Kimmel a hug and telling him \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disney saw major spike in streaming cancellations during Jimmy Kimmel suspension<\/a>George Clooney thinks Bob Iger showed courage (eventually) about Jimmy Kimmel<\/a><\/p>\n

So, the hiring drama of two decades ago has not ruined their relationship. And after all, the job didn\u2019t come down to talent so much as economics, Kimmel said. He recalled asking Iger about the hiring process later. \u201cI said, \u2018What was it, like why\u2014this is quite a leap that you guys made. I was on The Man Show, I was doing football picks on Fox NFL Sunday\u2014what was it?’\u201d Kimmel remembered. \u201cHe goes, \u2018Well, you were cheaper.\u2019 And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn\u2019t kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can you imagine a universe where it was actually \u201cJon Stewart Live!\u201c? Where it was Stewart, rather than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-234956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}