Jimmy Kimmel Live! Booted By ABC

Summary

KENNEDY SAVES THE WORLD
Episode: "Jimmy Kimmel Live! Booted By ABC"
Date: September 18, 2025
Host: Kennedy (Fox News Podcasts)

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Main Theme

Kennedy explores the recent indefinite hiatus (and possible cancellation) of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC, examining the decline of late-night comedy hosts who became increasingly political, and how cultural, business, and political climates contributed to this shift. With personal anecdotes and a sharp, humorous style, Kennedy critiques the impact of partisan content on mainstream entertainment and the consequences for figures like Jimmy Kimmel.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fall of Jimmy Kimmel and the Shifting Late-Night Landscape

• Kennedy recalls Kimmel’s roots as a spontaneous, fun, and culturally sharp comic, beloved for the irreverent spirit he brought to early radio and television.
• The transition to overt political commentary, especially anti-Trump rhetoric, is cited as a turning point. Kennedy argues Kimmel’s comedy became tired, alienating, and less authentic over the past decade.
  • “Jimmy Kimmel used to be brilliant and spontaneous and fun... and if he still has all of those capabilities, he has not been displaying them over the last, I don't know, nine years, 10 years since President Trump descended on the gilded escalator.” (00:19)

2. Kimmel and Carolla: Diverging Paths

• Personal stories illustrate Kennedy’s early professional encounters with Kimmel and Adam Carolla at KROQ’s “Kevin and Bean” show.
• Kimmel and Carolla’s chemistry is reminisced upon, especially their legacy with ‘The Man Show’, which was purposefully politically incorrect and self-amusing.
  • “Jimmy and Adam together were like chocolate and peanut butter, the two tastes that taste great together that no one knew they needed. And they made absolute magic together.” (02:03)
• Their paths diverged: Carolla evolved into an independent podcaster with loyal listeners; Kimmel sought mainstream approval and Hollywood circles.

3. Partisan Groupthink and Its Costs

• Kennedy contends that Kimmel’s aspirations led him deeper into Hollywood’s “leftist” orthodoxy, aligning with powerful figures and adopting positions necessary to remain in that in-group.
• The trade-off: mass appeal and comedic bite were lost in favor of echoing political stances, to the detriment of the show’s ratings and role as comedy.
  • “Jimmy wanted to be liked. He wanted to be an A-lister... And when you live in that world, you in your own way, become moderately radicalized. And that's what happened to Jimmy.” (03:10)
• The host links Kimmel’s increasingly partisan tone to audience alienation, declining ratings, and the broader fate of late-night TV, including the end of Colbert’s show on CBS.

4. Young Audiences and Market Forces

• Kennedy points out that younger viewers, especially men, have abandoned network late-night shows, preferring alternative voices not bound by political correctness. She credits Greg Gutfeld’s success to his willingness to "still make people laugh" without lecturing.
  • “A lot of [young men] have gone to Gutfeld... because he's the one who is speaking to an audience who still wants to laugh, who... doesn't necessarily want to be lectured to.” (08:33)

5. Kimmel’s Controversy and Hypocrisy

• The host remarks on Kimmel’s recent, incorrect public statement about a high-profile incident, labeling his rush to connect violent acts to political adversaries as irresponsible (the claim that Charlie Kirk’s killer was “part of the MAGA crew”).
  • “Now that Jimmy Kimmel came out and with that idiotic statement that the guy who killed Charlie Kirk was part of the MAGA crew, which was so disprovable, he knew it to be wrong then, but somehow he still said it.” (09:21)
• Kennedy highlights the hypocrisy of anti-gun celebrities employing armed security, observing the ironies in how anxiety about personal safety influences elite behavior.

6. Free Speech, Market Correction, and Political Retaliation

• Kennedy distinguishes between the right to free speech and entitlement to a prime network show:
  • “Jimmy Kimmel has the right to free speech. He is not entitled to his own show to waste millions and millions of dollars by virtue of his fabulousness. And that is the correction that has been made here.” (12:58)
• The episode criticizes any potential government interference—referencing FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s remarks about "balancing the climate"—urging that market forces, not political vendettas, should shape television:
  • “I do not want to see Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, on anyone's airwaves talking about liberals they're going to target in order to balance things out. Let the market do that.” (13:48)
• Kennedy warns about the dangers of government overreach, especially if the political winds shift, potentially turning regulatory focus onto conservative voices in the future.

7. Call for Rational Discourse and Comedy’s True Role

• Concluding, Kennedy voices a yearning for the return of politically incorrect, broad comedy that targets both sides and lightens the national mood. She laments that partisan seriousness has replaced irreverence and fun—once the late night staple.
  • “What we have to do ultimately in this climate is bring the temperature down... having politically incorrect skits about women jumping on trampolines the way the Lord intended.” (14:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Jimmy wanted to be liked... so he became friends with Howard Stern and Jennifer Aniston, and all of the people who were the architects of that annoying leftist group think...” (03:20)
• “Even if you are an avid leftist... chances are you are getting your information from a podcast or a substacker who is probably a little bit more intellectual than Jimmy Kimmel.” (04:17)
• “When you're no longer funny, when you're no longer fulfilling the purpose for which your job was originally intended, then maybe it's time to show you the door...” (11:48)
• “You should be defending everyone's right to free speech. And Jimmy Kimmel has the right to free speech. He is not entitled to his own show...” (12:56)
• “Let the market do that. Let the shareholders stand up and do that. Let the affiliates be the ones who put the pressure on ABC to make that decision so we can finally kind of take politics out of it.” (13:58)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00-03:10: Kennedy recalls Kimmel and Carolla’s origins, the transgressive ‘Man Show,’ and a shift in Kimmel's trajectory.
• 03:10-05:00: Discussion of the Hollywood groupthink and Kimmel’s desire for acceptance.
• 05:00-07:35: Impacts on audience, success of alternative shows, and market decline for legacy late night.
• 07:50-09:45: Criticism of Kimmel’s political misstatements, hypocrisy in celebrity politics.
• 11:48-13:48: On whether Kimmel deserved to lose the show, business motivations, and free speech versus platform entitlement.
• 13:48-14:20: Warning about government overreach and FCC’s potential targeting.
• 14:20-close: Nostalgia for truly irreverent late-night humor and calls for lowering the political temperature.

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Tone & Style

Kennedy employs a conversational, irreverent, slightly acidic yet playful tone. She blends humor with a pointed critique of Hollywood and political culture, while punctuating her analysis with personal anecdotes from her media career.

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Summary

This episode provides an incisive—and highly opinionated—postmortem of Jimmy Kimmel’s career shift and the fate of late-night comedy in an age of political polarization. Kennedy alternates between nostalgia and satire, advocating for a revival of fearless, bipartisan comedy and for market solutions over regulatory ones. Suitable for listeners seeking both cultural commentary and behind-the-scenes media insight, laced with Kennedy’s signature wit.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign hello and welcome to this episode of Kennedy Saves the World. All anyone can talk about today is Jimmy Kimmel and the fact that his show has been put on indefinite hiatus. Who knows if the show is going to come back, but they're are many reasons this happened. Jimmy Kimmel used to be brilliant and spontaneous and fun and just had an incredible cutting sense of humor and brilliant brain. And if he still has all of those capabilities, he has not been displaying them over the last, I don't know, nine years, 10 years since President Trump descended on the gilded escalator. And I don't know if it's the bubble that Jimmy Kimmel is swimming and existing in. I don't know if it's the people that he has surrounded himself with. I will tell you that he and I started at the same radio station, KRL Q in Los Angeles. He was the sports guy on Kevin and Bean, which is a show that is not no longer the morning show at krock, although I believe Kevin has returned to the airways there after he was escorted rather tersely out of the building after providing them with, you know, millions and millions and millions in ad revenue over the years. So he was unceremoniously relieved of his post. But Jimmy started as the sports guy on Kevin and Bean and got into a fight with Michael the maintenance man, and they wanted to have a boxing match. So a guy who was barely employed in North Hollywood heard this, called the radio station and was like, hey, I train boxers. I'll train them for free. Went to the station and they're like, okay, you're gonna train Jimmy. And that's how Jimmy Kimmel met Adam Carolla and Adam shared that story on the Freedom Fest stage with me this year in Palm Springs. So Jimmy and Adam together were like chocolate and peanut butter, the two tastes that taste great together that no one knew they needed. And they made absolute magic together in so many ways, not only on Kevin and Bean, but also on the man show, which was politically incorrect. They did stuff to make themselves laugh. And that's when Jimmy was genuinely funny. And then he somehow diverged. Like Adam became more rational and I don't think he would consider himself to be a conservative, but he definitely started looking at things in a more skeptical way and didn't want to be for force fed the Democrat group think in California, which has really ruined the state. Now, Jimmy, on the other hand, Adam went the podcasting route and has made a lot, a lot of money and just a great name for himself and devote and has developed rather such a loyal audience doing his various podcasts over the years and is enterprising and hard working, and I wish Adam all the success in the world. Jimmy wanted to be liked. He wanted to be an A lister. So he became friends with Howard Stern and Jennifer Aniston. And, you know, all of the people who were the architects of that annoying leftist group think, you know, the kind of orthodoxy where you cannot be employed unless you walk in lockstep with us, especially on politics. You know, when you have people like Tom Hanks and George Clooney and Julia Roberts raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Democrat establishment and you want to be friends with them and you want access to their products and you want to book them on your show, then you are going to live in that world. And when you live in that world, you know, you in your own way, become moderately radicalized. And that's what happened to Jimmy. And he decided that he didn't care if he was alienating half of the country. He wanted to make sure people knew that Donald Trump was the worst political investment voters could ever make and that he was going to do irreparable harm, even if the results showed otherwise. So he has used Trump as a punchline and a punching bag for years and years and years, and the shtick has gotten old. And even if you are an avid leftist, the chances are that you are getting your information from a podcast or a substacker who is probably a little bit more intellectual than Jimmy Kimmel. And even though, you know, he's got some fast jokes every once in a while, his overall comedy, the thing that made him and Adam laughed, that is essentially gone, because there's no way you could be as politically incorrect as they were on the man show and still book a list guests for mediocre interviews. So in going after Trump and when Trump was reelected, when he was given his second term, Jimmy Kimmel just came unglued and sobbed on the air the next night for, you know, the bad decision. And he's so sad for, you know, the immigrants and the hardworking people in this country who will now NATO is going to be abandoned, and, you know, every institution is going to crumble. And he even feels bad for the people who voted for him. And when someone confronted him was like, you know, aren't you worried that you're alienating half of your audience? He said, I don't care. Well, if you are an ABC station and you are an affiliate, who's looking at that? Don't you want someone who is hosting your flag team ship late night show to care who they're talking to and to try and appeal to that wider audience. I mean, I sure as hell would. So these massive shows that employ, you know, 200 people for Colbert, you know, maybe it's 100 people for Jimmy Kimmel. And you know, you're spending $100 million a year and your ratings are going down and down and down, especially in that critical demographic like young men. They want to look good and be cool. You know, they want to go out and buy stuff. They don't want to listen to someone who has been politically neutered, who's lecturing them every night when he should be making them laugh. So when CBS pulled the plug on Colbert, I've been saying this since CBS made that kind of shocking decision. I was like, this isn't just the political climate we're in. The, the political climate doesn't dictate what these people do. The political climate informs them that there is still half the country that's not going away, that is not falling in lockstep with people like Jimmy Kimmel who think by virtue of farting out a political opinion that people are going to huff the essence and follow him into the voting booth. That is not the case. Don't go anywhere more Kennedy saves the World right after this.

[B]

It's Will Kane Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through [e-mail] or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

[A]

They have been incredibly short sighted people like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel who you know, weren't originally employed to be doing political shows. John Oliver is different. I, I find him to be pedantic and insufferable, but he is different in his own way. Jimmy Kimmel is the kind of person who feels like he is entitled to continue to do a talk show because he's been doing it for so long. When CBS made that bold move, ABC was like, well, we would also like to save that much money because we have so much competition in media and there's so many places our viewers, particularly young men, can go. And guess what? A lot of them have gone to Gutfeld. And that's why, you know, Greg has been crowned. The crown might have been self placed, the king of late night because he's the one who is speaking to an audience who still wants to laugh, who you know, doesn't necessarily want to be lectured to. But they want to make jokes about things that are not necessarily politically correct or, you know, they want to be able to say things that would offend Jennifer Aniston and her book club. Jimmy Kimmel works very hard to not offend that precious sect of people. So Greg has been the beneficiary of his neutering. So now that Jimmy Kimmel came out and with that idiotic statement that the guy who killed Charlie Kirk was part of the MAGA crew, which was so disprovable, he knew it to be wrong then, but somehow he still said it when his initial statement was he extended sympathy to Erica Kirk and their children. But of course he had to qualify it and say all the other family members and children who have been the victims of senseless gun violence because, you know, he is an anti gun guy. But it's interesting because. Because this climate has been fomented by the rage of radicalized people who dehumanize their opponent. Jimmy Kimmel would love to assume that the rage is coming from the right. So, you know, it's like, I feel bad for the guy because he's probably worried about his own safety. So what do you do when you're worried? When you're a rich person living in an era like this, when you have become the target of people's ire, you hire people to protect you. And what do those people have? They have guns. So there's a little bit of hypocrisy here. Now, should Jimmy Kimmel have been relieved of his position a long time ago? I mean, if you're abc, probably, you know, it's the sunken cost fallacy. They had been spending so much money for so long, they figured, you know, it would be wasteful to pull the plug now. But, you know, it's like when you're no longer funny, when you're no longer fulfilling the purpose for which your job was originally intended, then maybe it's time to show you the door so you can find another avenue to pontificate about your politics. Which, you know, if Jimmy Kimmel's smart, that's what he'll do. I don't know that he's got any bigger audience for it in a newer medium than he's been working on. But he is not entitled to that show. And ABC and their affiliates are entitled to expect revenue and to make better business decisions. In fact, they are beholden to their shareholders to make better business decisions. And I have a feeling there are people who are massive shareholders and who sit on the board who are relieved that the decision came when it did. What I don't like is the FCC chair going on shows, even on Fox News, talking about how the government and he's going to use his power to change the climate and balance things out and personally rail against Jimmy Kimmel. That is very dangerous. Because let's say Gavin Newsom becomes our next president. Uh, who do you think his FCC chair is going to go after first? It will be Greg Gutfeld. It will be people on this network. Uh, they will be targeted. They will employ the Fairness Doctrine, just as Obama flirted with throughout his entire administration. And, you know, they will not be protected by free speech, even though that's what everyone is crying now on the left. You know, where were you guys two months ago? Where were you guys two years ago when free speech has been under attack from the Biden administration? Because it's one of those things that libertarians are pretty consistent on, that, you know, the traditional two parties have a really, really hard time with unless it's their person who is under threat. So you should be defending every. Everyone's right to free speech. And Jimmy Kimmel has the right to free speech. He is not entitled to his own show to waste millions and millions of dollars by virtue of his fabulousness. And that is the correction that has been made here. Um, I think President Trump needs to slow it down. I don't think he needs to brag about this or fan the flames, even if he feels like he's defending Charlie Kirk. And. And I do not want to see Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, on anyone's airwaves talking about liberals they're going to target in order to balance things out. Let the market do that. Let the shareholders stand up and do that. Let the affiliates be the ones who put the pressure on ABC to make that decision so we can finally kind of take politics out of it. Because that's what we have to do ultimately, in this climate is bring the temperature down so we can finally go back to having rational discussions, making fun of both sides and ourselves, and also having politically incorrect skits about women jumping on trampolines the way the Lord intended. This has been Kennedy saves the World. I know there are crazy times. That's why I'm here for you. I'm Kennedy. Listen. Ad free With a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple podcasts and Amazon prime, members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon music app. Oh, go ahead and leave me a review while you're there. I'd love to hear what you have to say. You've been listening to Kennedy Saves the World on the FOX News Podcast Network.

[B]

Foreign gy, host of the Trey Gaddy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow [e-mail].