Last month, ABC executives told Jimmy Kimmel that his late-night show would be taken off the air. The audience was already in the studio: a guest chef had started cooking, a musical guest was warming up the room, and the host himself remained in the bathroom, waiting for a call.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt was around 3:00; our show is being taped at 4:30,\u201d Kimmel told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show on Tuesday. \u201cI was in my office, typing, as usual. They called me. It\u2019s ABC. They said they wanted to talk to me. It\u2019s strange: as far as I understood, they didn\u2019t even know I was doing a show until then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jimmy Kimmel, The Late Show\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The show\u2019s writers gathered in the office: five writers were nearby, and the only private place where he could take the call was the bathroom.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo I went to the bathroom and spoke on the phone with ABC executives. And they say: \u2018Listen, we want to dial down the tension. We\u2019re concerned about what you\u2019ll say tonight, and we\u2019ve decided that the best path is to pull the show off the air.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jimmy Kimmel, The Late Show\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The audience booed the star, and Kimmel quipped: \u201cOh, exactly what I said: I started booing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI said: \u2018I don\u2019t think this is a good idea,\u2019 and they replied: \u2018Well, we think it\u2019s a good idea.\u2019 Then a vote took place, and I lost the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jimmy Kimmel, The Late Show\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After that, the head of production sat down with him in the office, and Kimmel\u2019s face suddenly went pale at the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought: here it is. It\u2019s over. I thought I\u2019d never go back on the air,\u201d he recalled later in the conversation.<\/p>\n
The show was suspended in mid-September after a sharp monologue mentioning the suspects in the murder of Charlie Kirk and the political reaction to the incident. A few days later, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke ABC\u2019s licenses in a conservative podcast. Nexstar \u2013 the network of stations that carries \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d in about twenty markets \u2013 also announced that it would not have the show on the air. Another affiliated network, Sinclair, did the same. And just a few hours later, Kimmel picked up the phone in the ABC executives\u2019 office.<\/p>\n
The following Tuesday, Kimmel returned to the air with an emotional monologue \u2013 and record-breaking ratings.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI was very nervous to do this right, because there was nothing in the teleprompter to read. I spoke off the cuff,\u201d \u2013 said Colbert when recalling that moment. \u201cThey started: \u2018Come on, Stephen, you can do this,\u2019 because I always stumble over those words. And when it came to the sentence that explains what\u2019s happening, they didn\u2019t laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Stephen Colbert\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While the network owner called the cancellation purely a business decision, many media critics \u2013 and Kimmel himself \u2013 doubted that motivation and suspected political motives related to the reaction to Paramount\u2019s merger with Skydance. Both hosts \u2013 Colbert and Kimmel \u2013 have long been known for their sharp stance toward President Donald Trump, a topic that remained widely discussed in the media and among viewers.<\/p>\n
Attention was also drawn to Meyers\u2019 appearance in the studio and viewers\u2019 reactions on social media \u2013 an Instagram post showed a photo of the three hosts with the caption \u201cHi Donald!\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimmel\u2019s return to the air became one of the most powerful moments of that time \u2013 with high ratings and an emotional undertone that underscored the significance of his show in the cultural landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, ABC executives told Jimmy Kimmel that his late-night show would be taken off the air. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[14350,18,117,62253,19,17,7613,62254,62255,5,62256,62257,4951,7671,128,13522],"class_list":{"0":"post-97133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-fcc-threats","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","15":"tag-late-night-show","16":"tag-media-censorship","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-political-controversy","19":"tag-show-cancellation","20":"tag-stephen-colbert","21":"tag-the-late-show","22":"tag-tv","23":"tag-tv-ratings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}