{"id":244868,"date":"2025-10-23T01:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T01:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/244868\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T01:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T01:17:09","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-jokes-abc-made-a-mistake-not-giving-jon-stewart-his-gig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/244868\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel Jokes ABC Made “A Mistake” Not Giving Jon Stewart His Gig"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFollowing his talk show\u2019s near cancellation<\/a> last month, Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> revealed how Jon Stewart<\/a> nearly landed his hosting gig.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/a> host recently said ABC<\/a> \u201cshould definitely hire Jon\u201d after the network passed on Stewart, in favor of Kimmel, for the late-night talk show that premiered back in January 2003.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey wanted a traditional late-night talk show in that slot,\u201d he explained on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name<\/a> podcast. \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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKimmel added, \u201cLloyd [Braun, then ABC chairman] watched the tape and he was like, \u2018I think this might be the guy.\u2019 And he brought the tape to Bob Iger<\/a> and Iger said, \u2018Yeah, I think this might be the guy.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 5x Emmy winner recalled it being \u201ca very strange\u201d situation for Dixon, who was \u201cin the difficult position of having to tell Jon, \u2018Uh, you\u2019re not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jon<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJon Stewart on \u2018Jimmy Kimmel Live!\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Randy Holmes<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was a mistake by the way. They definitely should hire Jon,\u201d added Kimmel. \u201cIf I\u2019m in that position, there\u2019s no question I hire John 100 times out of a 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKimmel recalled telling Iger that they took \u201cquite a leap\u201d in hiring him, and when asked why they chose him, the Disney CEO said, \u201c\u2018Well, you were cheaper.\u2019 And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn\u2019t kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSomehow we wound up getting good ratings. I still don\u2019t know how that was, but they were good enough to keep us on the air,\u201d said Kimmel. \u201cEven 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\tLast month, Kimmel returned to air<\/a> following his brief suspension, driving 6.26 million viewers<\/a> for ABC. The network previously announced the show was \u201cpreempted indefinitely<\/a>,\u201d which many criticized as an attack on free speech, following the FCC\u2019s warning about the late-night host\u2019s Charlie Kirk comments<\/a> and Donald Trump\u2019s celebration of the show\u2019s suspension<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following his talk show\u2019s near cancellation last month, Jimmy Kimmel revealed how Jon Stewart nearly landed his hosting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1855,88,17114,11575,9609,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-244868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","11":"tag-jimmy-kimmel-live","12":"tag-jon-stewart","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}