DLNews Entertainment:

Late-Night Comedy Meets Its Bedtime

Los Angeles – America’s free speech debate just found a new stage prop: the empty desk of Jimmy Kimmel. ABC pulled the plug on his long-running late-night show, citing financial strain, though the political aftershocks are echoing louder than his monologue jokes ever did in recent years.

On paper, the numbers told a grim story. Kimmel was earning $16 million a year under a contract meant to last until 2026, performing out of the famously expensive El Capitan Entertainment Center on Hollywood Boulevard. Pair that with shrinking ad revenues and late-night’s declining clout, and the economics began to look less like show business and more like no business. Colbert’s show was already bleeding up to $50 million annually, proving that even a laugh track can’t muffle red ink.

Then there were the viewers—or rather, the ones who wandered off. Kimmel’s ratings had sunk to around 1.7 million per night. In a country of 350 million, that’s less a cultural juggernaut and more a neighborhood book club with better lighting.  

Political undertones, of course, fuel the drama. Kimmel had long leaned into partisan jabs, especially during election seasons. Still, his own admission that those jokes halved his audience suggests that laughter wasn’t the only thing split down the middle. Networks rarely fire stars for telling jokes; they fire them for telling jokes no one’s watching.

Behind the scenes, larger business interests may have applied the final shove. With media parent companies navigating billion-dollar mergers and regulators scrutinizing every move, late-night controversy became an expensive luxury. When comedy costs more than it earns, the accountants always win the punchline.

So, Kimmel exits stage left, not with a standing ovation but with a shrug. The real story may be that late-night itself is out past curfew, and the cultural power once wielded by talk-show titans has slipped quietly into streaming queues and TikTok feeds. After all, in television, the joke is always on whoever thinks they’re too big to be canceled.