June 1, 2026

ACTUALLY, IT IS DYING OF NATURAL CAUSES: Jimmy Kimmel ‘Felt Defeated’ by Stephen Colbert’s Cancellation and Says Late-Night TV Is Not ‘Dying of Natural Causes:’ ‘We’re Being Poisoned.’

Jimmy Kimmel has some thoughts on the purported death of late-night television.

The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host opened up in a new interview with Vulture about the future of the genre following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Show” on CBS and his own run-ins with Trump, including his suspension following comments made about the death of Charlie Kirk.

“I feel a little bit defeated about it,” Kimmel told Vulture after Colbert’s final episode aired on May 21. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future.”

CBS canceled “The Late Show” in July 2025 — a year before Colbert’s three-year deal was set to end — citing “purely financial reasons” despite much speculation that Colbert’s anti-Trump views had something to do with it, especially with the Paramount-Skydance merger in the background. Though it was reported that Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year, Kimmel told Vulture he finds that hard to believe, pointing to a 2023 New York Times article that claims Colbert was offered a five-year contract but decided to go with three.

“Am I to believe that over the course of those two years, they suddenly started losing $40 million a year?” he said. “These are just made-up numbers.”

Kimmel said that ABC has told him “quite specifically” that his show is still profitable.

“There are far more people watching late-night TV than there ever were, if you look at the number of views me and my colleagues get online every day and add in our linear-television ratings,” Kimmel asserted, adding: “We’re not just dying of natural causes. We’re being poisoned.”

However, Kimmel’s contract was extended in December by just one year instead of the standard three. “Everything is so tumultuous,” Kimmel told Vulture. “That seemed to make sense. It’s definitely not how it’s gone in the past.”

Related: 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley accuses Bari Weiss of ‘murdering’ show.

Scott Pelley, a veteran 60 Minutes correspondent, called out CBS News management in a heated meeting on Monday morning, attacking the network’s decision on Thursday to fire the show’s executive producer, executive editor, and two fellow correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as part of a broader overhaul of the show, sources tell the Guardian.

During a meeting of the show’s staff and Nick Bilton, its newly appointed executive producer, along with the CBS News managing editor Charles Forelle, Pelley took direct aim at Bari Weiss, the network’s controversial editor-in-chief.

“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley said, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”

Beyond Pelley’s own stated establishment left biases, and the Rathergate debacle, I can’t imagine why Weiss “does not love this place” and wants to “murder” 60 Minutes:

Kimmel and Pelley must feel a bit like big band leaders with shows on AM radio in the 1950s and ’60s as first television, and then those crazy rock and roll kids and DJs smoking the jazz cabbage arrived on newfangled FM radio, confused by the new technologies that are dooming their beloved legacy platforms.

As with AM radio today, the technology of television will continue long into the future. But the content it delivers will likely change so that those who own these legacy media platforms will continue to make a profit on their diminishing investment returns.

As for Pelley’s likely future:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll