The Charle Kirk thing was just a convenient excuse for ABC to pull Kimmel's show off the air. They were planning to do it anyway due to it losing money and viewership.
"Jimmy Kimmel Live," as well as CBS's "The Late Show" and NBC's "The Tonight Show with Seth Meyers" have seen viewership declines of 70% to 80% since 2015
The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show highlights a broader crisis facing late-night TV as networks cut costs amid declining ratings and advertising revenue.
www.foxbusiness.com
The profitability of Jimmy Kimmel's show is a topic of debate among various analyses. Declining viewership and advertising revenue are cited as factors that may impact the show's profitability, with one source suggesting that the show lost nearly half its audience from January 2025 to September 2025, resulting in a 45% collapse in total audience and nearly 40% collapse in the advertiser-coveted demo. Another source notes that late-night TV shows, including Jimmy Kimmel's, are facing declining viewership and advertising revenue, implying that the show may not be profitable due to these declines . However, other sources report that 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' brought in close to $70 million in ad revenue for ABC year-to-date and that ad spending on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' totaled $51.1 million in 2024 , indicating that the show was generating significant revenue.
The profitability of Jimmy Kimmel's show is a topic of debate among various analyses. Declining viewership and advertising revenue are cited as factors tha...
factually.co
One major problem is that Kimmel, like many other late night talk hosts, has taken a pretty hard Left political position on their 'humor' and commentary. That has, as it has everywhere else from talk radio to MSNBC or CNN, resulted in a big decline in viewers. The vast majority of their potential audience doesn't want to hear or agree with hard Left positions. That's not new.
Late-night TV is under threat from Trump and a precarious business model
Once the crown jewel of network television, the late-night format faces intense political pressure as ratings and revenue decline.
www.businessinsider.com
Bill Maher gets it. He's backed away from Leftist everything all of the time. Gutfeld (and no, I don't find him particularly funny or watchable) has good number on viewership etc., because he doesn't do Leftist.
All Charlie Kirk's assassination did was give ABC et al., an excuse to boot Kimmel off the air sooner and stop the hemorrhaging of red ink and money his show represented.