Jimmy Kimmel has been hosting and executive producing Jimmy Kimmel Live! for over 20 years now, and while there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, it feels like the late-night landscape is on the cusp of big change. Late-night television is constantly evolving, with some fan-favorite hosts such as Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and James Corden bowing out over the years. Now, as late-night TV continues to transform, Kimmel is getting real about where he thinks it will be a decade from now, and the future looks bleak.
Late-night television has always been a place where you can watch celebrity interviews, comedy sketches, humorous monologues, and some other content that is usually not appropriate for daytime television. However, according to Kimmel, it may not last. He appeared on the iHeart podcast Politickin’ with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson, where he was asked where he sees shows like his going in 10 years, and it’s not looking good:
Well, I don’t know if there will be any late-night television shows on network TV in 10 years. Maybe there’ll be one, but there won’t be a lot of them. The audience is there a lot to watch. You know, and now people can watch anything at any time. They’ve got all these streaming services. It used to be, like, Johnny Carson was the one thing on at 11:30 and so everybody watched, and then David Letterman was on after Johnny, and so people would watch those two shows. But now, there are so many options, and maybe even more significantly, the fact that people are able to easily watch your monologue online the next day, 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 gonna stop paying for it to be made.
The internet has certainly made it easier to watch late-night television in many ways. It can be viewed at any time, and usually, full interviews and monologues, etc., are available on sites like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. However, on the flip side, while this makes the content more accessible, it also provides less incentive to watch the show when it airs on its given network.
That doesn’t necessarily mean by 2034, late-night will be non-existent, it could always move to streaming. However, considering someone who has been in this industry for over 20 years doesn’t have a good outlook on it, a seismic shift feels probable. Late-night television has been around for decades, but it’s possible the end could be coming, even if it’s not in 10 years.
While he got real about the possibility of late-night changing, Kimmel doesn’t want it to end any time soon, even though he has thought about retirement. He went on to say:
I will have a hard time when it’s over… It worries me. And that’s part of the reason why I keep going each time, I think, ‘Well, this is gonna be my last contract,’ and then I wind up signing another contract. It’s because I have that fair that Monday after my final show, and it’s like, ‘Okay, now what am I gonna do?’ Because there aren’t a huge number of options for late-night hosts after the shows are over. People think of you as a late-night talk show host, and it’s not like you’re suddenly going to start starring in films trying to be an ex-politician.
There will come a time when Jimmy Kimmel announces his eventual departure from late-night television, and even further in the future, late-night will probably dwindle down. I hope it’s in the far future. Nothing is super predictable about the future of the entertainment industry, so anything can happen. Who knows, maybe everything will be different a year from now?
However, when it comes to what we do know, Kimmel’s late-night hosting duties will continue, and his Oscars hosting gig will not. It was previously announced that he will not be returning to host the 2025 Academy Awards, revealing on the same Politickin’ podcast that balancing it and his show is “too much.” He didn’t completely count out hosting in the future, but at least for next year, that job will go to someone else, while he focuses on his show.
For now, late-night television isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Jimmy Kimmel, as his show will continue to air on the 2024 TV schedule. There is no predicting where it could be years from now, and Kimmel may be wrong, but fans will just have to continue watching late-night to make sure it sticks around. Television is always changing, and it’s hard to tell how things will end up, including the future of late-night television.
