Jimmy Kimmel spent much of 2022 vacillating about whether he would continue hosting his eponymous late-night show before striking a new three-year deal.
The host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! revealed that one of the reasons he signed this deal was that he is “worried” about what he’ll do next.
But a bigger concern for the late-night world is that Kimmel doesn’t think there will necessarily be any late-night shows on network television in 2034.
“I don’t know if there will be any late-night television shows on network TV in ten years. Maybe there’ll be one but there won’t be a lot of them,” he said on the Politickin’ podcast. “There’s a lot to watch and now people can watch anything at anytime, they’ve got all these streaming services. It used to be Johnny Carson was the only thing on at 11:30pm and so everybody watched and then David Letterman was on after Johnny so people watched those two shows but now they’re so many options. Maybe more significantly, the fact that people are easily able to watch your monologue online the next day, it really cancels out the need to watch it when it’s on the air and once people stop watching it when it’s on the air, networks are going to stop paying for it to be made.”
There’s certainly fewer late-nights shows on TV now than over the last few years with the cancellation of shows such as Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal, Ziwe and Desus & Mero as well as a handful of network shows that no longer exist such as The Late Late Show, A Little Late with Lilly Singh and Last Call with Carson Daly.
Kimmel, who has hosted the show for over 21 years, is set to surpass Jay Leno’s late-night tenure next year, putting him third in the rankings after David Letterman (33 years), Johnny Carson (30) and Conan O’Brien (28).
He admitted to NFL legend Marshawn Lynch, California Governor Gavin Newsom and agent Doug Hendrickson that he’s concerned about what he’ll do after the ABC show.
“I will have a hard time when it’s over. It worries me. That’s part of the reason I keep going. Each time, I think this is going to be my last contract and then I wind up signing another contract, it’s because I fear that day, that Monday after my final show, where it’s like ok, now what am I going to do. There aren’t a huge amount of options for late-night hosts after the shows are over. People think of you like a late-night talk show host, it’s not like you are suddenly going to start starring in films,” he said.
Kimmel does run Kimmelot, a production company that has ties to Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse Entertainment, which is behind series such as Hulu’s High Hopes, ABC’s Prank Panel, Generation Gap and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers and ESPN docuseries Once Upon A Time In Queens: The Wild Ride of the ’86 Mets as well as multiple Discovery shows.
Last week, Deadline revealed that Kimmel is producing Whatever Happened to Huey Lewis?, a mockumentary comedy about his friend Lewis, which is in the works at Fox.
