TOUGH BREAK

Jimmy Kimmel’s Boss Gives Ominous Update on His Future at ABC

Kimmel’s ratings are up, but his Disney boss has some major reservations.

Jimmy Kimmel, 58, is once again at risk of cancellation by ABC.

Dana Walden, the president and chief creative officer of the Walt Disney Company, said during a conversation at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference that the future of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is unclear, despite the show’s climbing ratings.

The network has yet to renew Kimmel’s contract beyond May 2027, though Kimmel’s team is in discussions with Disney about the show’s status.

“It’s a very challenging daypart, late-night,” Walden said. “That’s not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late night on broadcast television.”

Walden added that, though “millions of people” watch clips of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on YouTube, the site “is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show.”

“We’re trying to make sense of the business while also honoring a deep partnership,” she said. “I love Jimmy. We have a great friendship. He’s close to a number of the people at Disney, and again, we’re trying to work through it and make sense of both. What does Jimmy want? What’s the right thing to do, and what’s the right thing for our business?”

Kimmel has become an avatar of free speech since Sept. 2025, when Trump’s FCC goon, Brendan Carr, pulled his show off the air for five days after a joke about Charlie Kirk. A year later, Kimmel accused Carr of censoring his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, which ended up streaming on YouTube instead of airing on ABC.

Late-night shows also face the threat of budget cuts, and Kimmel is no exception. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that “a fair estimate” of how much ABC would cut is 20 percent of Live’s current budget.

Ahead of its parent company’s merger with Trump-friendly billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance, CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert for what it claimed were “purely financial reasons.”

Kimmel is in the midst of his week taping shows in Brooklyn, New York. The guest lineup includes A-list MAGA opponents like Howard Stern, Billy Crystal, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Kimmel even had Oscar-winner Robert De Niro, 83, play a bat-wielding Carr on Wednesday night.

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On Wednesday, he slammed Trump’s new executive order renaming AI “Super Intelligence.” On the document, the United States was misspelled as the “Unites States.”

“Could there ever be a better metaphor for this presidency than misspelling United States on a document about super intelligence?” Kimmel said. “There’s nothing these people can’t screw up.”

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

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