Jimmy Kimmel is currently on leave from his show. ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely. The decision follows fallout from Kimmel’s monologue about the killing of conservative figure Charlie Kirk. ABC took action after its largest affiliate owner, Nexstar Media Group, dropped Kimmel’s show from all 32 of its ABC stations.
While it’s unclear what the future holds for the late-night show, if the network decides to move away from Jimmy Kimmel, it may not just be because of his inaccurate and abhorrent comments about Charlie Kirk; it may also be a business decision by ABC.
According to monthly Nielsen figures, Jimmy Kimmel Live! dropped to just 1.1 million total viewers in August 2025, down 43% from January’s 1.95 million. His August household rating of 0.35 marked the weakest showing of the year.
The advertiser-coveted 18–49 demo has also taken a big hit. Kimmel averaged only 129,000 viewers in that bracket in August, down from 212,000 in January and less than half his June peak of 284,000.
Those August numbers could have been driven by the typical summer swoon and reruns common during that month. However, they are part of an overall trend in late-night television that has seen a decline in viewership in recent years, driven by changing consumer habits and an increasing focus on politics by late-night hosts.
For ABC, and for all broadcast networks looking to find a late-night talk show host who appeals to viewers in both blue Los Angeles, California, and red Lubbock, Texas, comedy doesn’t need to be political.
In fact, it was Johnny Carson who once warned those in his position about getting political, when he told Mike Wallace in a 1979 interview on 60 Minutes: “That’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling … and you could use that show to sway people. And I don’t think you should as an entertainer.”
When Carson did target politicians, it was typically done across the aisle, focusing on their personalities or public relations missteps rather than their policy stances. And what’s remarkable is that there have been plenty of opportunities to have fun with those topics in recent years, with Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and many others.
So, what does ABC do now? Their last hope may be to find a personality who can host a comedy show that appeals to a wide swath of people. These major networks still have a huge platform with great potential for broadcasting, rather than narrowcasting on platforms like YouTube and podcasts.
Their last, best hope is to find a host who is funny, compelling, interesting, thoughtful, likable, entertaining, and a good interviewer. Such people aren’t easy to find, and this person may not even be in the traditional comedy space right now. But it’s their only chance at long-term success.
And people still want to laugh. In a world and news cycle that often don’t bring uplifting stories, networks should try to find a way to make the largest number of people laugh—left, right, black, white, men, women, across the board.
Ultimately, the future of late-night rests on the willingness to return to comedy that unites rather than divides. ABC and its peers stand at a crossroads: they can double down on divisiveness or rediscover the universal appeal that once made late-night television a trusted nightly ritual for millions. Will the internal forces and perceived bias of the network allow them to see the forest through the trees? That remains to be seen.
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Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the Vice President of News/Talk for Cumulus Media, while also hosting “Mundo in the Morning” and programming KCMO Talk Radio in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on X @PeteMundo.
You can’t find a common ground. The Maga, what Greg Gutfeld or somebody from Yeehaw. The progressives want somebody like Kimmel. Anything in between will probably just be boring and uninteresting. The Trump administration appears to have successfully squashed late night television.