Jimmy Kimmel has been hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for 21 years and counting, but he’s not really sure how much longer any late-night talk show will be around. On the latest episode of Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch and Doug Hendrickson’s “Politickin’” podcast , Kimmel looked to the future by saying: “I don’t know if there will be any late-night television shows on network TV in 10 years.”
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“Maybe there’ll be one but there won’t be a lot of them,” he added. “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 11:30 p.m. 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.”
Not only are there so many options, but Kimmel argued that streaming platforms like YouTube and social media channels that break up late-night episodes into clips to watch after the episode airs has also limited the urgency of tuning in live.
“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,” he said. “Once people stop watching it when it’s on the air, networks are going to stop paying for it to be made.”
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Whenever Kimmel does go off the air and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” ends its run, he is fully aware that he’s going to have a hard time pivoting to whatever gig comes next.
“I will have a hard time when it’s over. It worries me,” he said. “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.”
Kimmel has been on a summer hiatus from hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The show has utilized guest hosts during these summer months, including Kathryn Hahn and Kumail Nanjiani, with Kimmel expected to return in the fall.
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