Jimmy Kimmel took a swipe at CBS parent company Paramount on Monday night (May 11) as he and his fellow late-night hosts joined Stephen Colbert for a special episode of The Late Show.
As Colbert prepares to say farewell to The Late Show next week, he invited Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver to Monday’s show for a Strike Force Five reunion. The group of hosts previously came together for a podcast series amid the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which helped raise funds for their out-of-work writing staff.
During the discussion, Colbert asked his peers a question that he himself has faced several times over the past few months: “Make a case for late-night.”
Kimmel spoke up first, telling people to look at the figures. “The fact of the matter is, more people are watching late-night television now than, and I know everybody gets crazy, than Johnny Carson,” he said. “Now, obviously, Johnny Carson had a lot of people watching one show.”
He continued, “But we have a lot of shows with like 30,000 people watching each one, and it adds up. People watch us on YouTube now. People have a lot of different options, and yet they keep coming to us.”
Kimmel then brought up his temporary suspension last September after backlash to a joke he made about the fallout from the Charlie Kirk assassination. He spoke about how fans rallied around him.
“I will tell you, when I got knocked off the air for a few days, people canceled Disney+,” he stated before making a dig about why people aren’t doing the same to support Colbert. “Why aren’t people canceling Paramount+? Because you never had it in the first place?”
Oliver, who hosts Last Week Tonight on HBO, a network Paramount might soon own if the merger with Warner Brothers Discovery goes through, jumped in to mockingly defend Paramount+.
“Well, Jimmy, until the deal goes through, if I could just do a counter there, Paramount+ might have some good programming, unless it’s not going through, in which case it can go f*** itself now and forever,” the British comedian quipped.
The group also discussed being the target of President Donald Trump, who frequently slams late-night hosts in Truth Social rants. “The thing I like, he posts when the show airs, and I want to say I appreciate that he is watching linear television,” Meyers said. “If I would make my case for late-night, it’s that leaders of the free world are watching it when it airs.”
CBS previously cited financial reasons for the cancelation, claiming the show loses $40 million annually. At the time, some critics argued the axing was politically motivated, with parent company Paramount hoping to appease President Donald Trump amid its merger with Skydance, which required government approval.
To mark The Late Show coming to an end, Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, and Oliver will release a special video episode of their Strike Force Five podcast, which is set to drop on Wednesday (May 13). In addition, Kimmel will pay his respects by having his show go dark next Thursday (May 26) during the series finale of The Late Show.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Weeknights, 11:35/10:35c, CBS
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