What's Next For Jimmy Kimmel?

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1:42Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Now people watching on YouTube will know this already. People listening might have picked it up but we're not together. We're apart Richard and it's all my fault because I have the coronavirus. Yeah. Is that your fault? Yeah. Well, it's not. No, it's not technically my fault. It has forced us apart and I am at home and I can apologise for any interruptions from my many, many, many deliveries. Also, for anyone watching on YouTube, Marina is sitting in front of her famous bookshelves as well.

2:16So they are all the way through. They're not looking at you. They're literally looking behind you and seeing the absurd higgledy-piggledy nature of your bookshelf. Don't say that where Kieran can hear it because he's actually downstairs. And I mean, this is meticulously organized. I mean, if we panned out, you would see it going all the way around. And it is in a system which some of it's rational and some of it is quite idiosyncratic, I'm going to say. Like the world, which brings us on to what we're talking about this week, does it not? It does. We are talking about, inevitably, we are talking about, I've seen some odd words used for this.

2:53the pre-empting, the suspension, temporary or otherwise, of Jimmy Kimmel. The fact that he's been taken off the air in direct response to a sort of something said by a Trump minion. And we're going to talk about that. Also going to talk, on a lighter note, going to talk about Taylor Swift and the possibility that she may be about to star in a Bodyguard remake. That is our pudding. But shall we get stuck into our main course? Let's get stuck into this serious main, Richard. now we're recording this on monday morning and honestly the best situation is for abc to get him back on air as soon as possible that might even happen before this podcast goes out that would definitely be best for disney uh best for democracy although a significant amount of damage has already been done so not to sort of overly rehash the story because i know our listeners will be familiar of it with it but what what happened is that last week in one of his opening monologues, Jimmy Kimmel made comments about the Charlie Kirk murder suspect.

3:56He said that Trump supporters had tried to characterize this kid as anything other than one of them. It does make a bit more sense in context what he was saying. My view, and I think the view of pretty much everyone, is that there was enough ambiguity and lack of clarity in a very sensitive situation that the monologue should have been re-recorded they're all pre-recorded the monologues at the top of these shows a lot of people will have seen that and i'm i'm quite surprised it wasn't however worse has been said many times every week for years and years and years he's talking about you know the murder suspect and a whole movement i think it began to be clipped pretty quickly remember trump has said following um the cancellation of stephen colbert's show which is still on the air but it's going to end jimmy kimmel was the one that trump singled out most frequently um saying he you know he's terrible he's awful he should be off air so he he's someone who's he's certainly focused on um but there are so many which which which by the way to put in context is like if every day keir starmer is sending tweets about michael mcintyre's the big show saying this is run out of steam come on bbc we've got to replace this that's where we are with that that's what's happening the the leader of the country is commenting on a very mainstream television yeah i think it's more sinister than that though because say what you like about big show it doesn't open up on that and that's probably why it does so well on a saturday night in its particular time slot it doesn't open up with a monologue about um recent um political tragedies and hot button issues.

5:36If when there's such a sort of direct link, it's very difficult. Now, I think there are so many telling details about this. The FCC, which is the Federal Communications Commission, is run by a guy called Brendan Carr, who is a complete sort of Trump minion, basically. They didn't issue a statement. What Brendan Carr did is that he went on a right-wing podcast, the Benny Johnson podcast, and he quite literally said, we can do things the easy way or the hard way, effectively told the companies to pull it. Now, when I say the companies, I'm talking about the affiliates. So we might need a little quick explanation on what the affiliates are.

6:15Yeah. So if you have ABC, which is what Kimmel is on, which is essentially owned by Disney, in every territory in America, so we know how America was put together. Historically, it's come to pass that different commercial companies carry the different networks into their territory so abc nbc and what have you come via a local affiliate into say kansas or kentucky or a part of california and there are three or four very big companies one is called next star one is called sinclair and over the years they built up a whole series of these affiliates in different areas of the country so they are not abc but next star for example carries probably 30 percent of ABC goes through Nextstar and Sinclair so if Nextstar who are not ABC say we want Kimmel off the air we're not going to show Kimmel in our territory suddenly you're losing a third of your audience overnight and that's what happened here Nextstar came out and said we are no longer going to show Jimmy Kimmel and that forces the hand of ABC.

7:15Forces the hand of ABC which is obviously owned by the Disney company. Now, the affiliates have always, traditionally in American broadcasting, always been more conservative in general than where these places are HQ'd, which tend to be sort of coastal and it's either New York or LA. And so you often find that throughout the course of TV history, there've been people saying, oh, we don't like this. We're not going to carry this. We think it's outrageous. We think whatever it is. So there is a sort of precedent to that. And all of them now, most of them now have deals that all of the companies that we're talking about have deals that they want to get across the line?

7:53Well, Nexstar, for example, are in talks to buy the third biggest company who essentially have affiliates. So they're about to buy this third biggest company. And they need to have that signed off, not by the FCC, but by the Department of Justice. So they need it signed off by the government. That's one of the big things. And even Disney, they have a big ESPN deal, they're trying to get over the line. They're trying to buy into the NFL, actually trying to literally buy into the NFL and they will need FCC approval. And so all of these companies in the next three to six months have an awful lot of money on the line, which is going to be dependent on government approval.

8:28So that's the kind of, that's the environment in which all these decisions are being made. And Bob Iger, who runs Disney, and Dana Walden, who runs the TV side of Disney and is maybe in pole position to take over after Iger. There's a sort of succession battle between about four of them. And she's widely thought probably to be in the lead of that. Jimmy Kimmel is a huge thing for ABC. Not only does he do Jimmy Kimmel live, he does the Oscars, he does Celebrity Millionaire, he does lots of specials for them. He always presents the upfront when they present their news slates to the advertisers. He's a sort of mega good servant to the company and they all like him.

9:08This, funnily enough, is why I mentioned Michael McIntyre because that is sort of who he is in that ecosystem. You know, every single ABC and Disney program, their stars come through the Jimmy Kimmel show. Jimmy Kimmel has always gone above and beyond to be a cheerleader for the company and to be incredibly useful to that company. So he is a big, big, big part of that ABC ecosystem. And that's, you know, he's not some maverick on a tiny channel. He is Michael McIntyre over there. He's a huge, big mainstream presence right at the heart of America and right at the heart of ABC. What happened was that Dana Walden and Bob Iger decided, he obviously refused to apologize and said, no, I want to do another monologue.

9:48I'll contextualize further what I was saying. And they thought that would make matters worse. And so before he could do that, they have pulled him off the air. They're continuing to pay everyone. I personally now believe they have to get it back on the air. And we'll come to that in a minute. they have to find a way back but it is very very difficult to find a way back because Sinclair was saying we're going to air a Charlie Kirk special so Sinclair by the way are the other one of the two companies so they're they're the people who run the affiliates one of the two yeah and they said oh we want to wear a Charlie Kirk special in the in the Jimmy Kimmel slot in the end I think they've been talked out of that and they aired and like everybody keeps airing these old editions of Family Feud in this slot.

10:31But now they're still saying the only way he could go back on air is if he personally gives money, Jimmy Kimmel personally gives money to Turning Point USA, a really extreme sort of ask. And of course, it's all a bargaining position. And maybe they'll find... They sort of have to find a way back now. This is just a theory. And this is my speculation. I think loads of people in Hollywood voted for Trump in 2016. And I certainly think they did in 2024. And I'll tell you why. And it's because all of them are in various forms of crisis. And they knew that various forms of consolidation were needed.

11:08And they voted on the M &A basis, on the fact that there need to be mergers and acquisitions to kind of keep Hollywood, to kind of save the ecosystem. So the high ups in Hollywood, the executives and people like that were voting out of self-interest. Well, here we are. It does make you think that it is all about money. What can happen? Okay, there are different forms of pressure. There's the audience pressure, subscriptions, people are cancelling their Disney Hulu subscriptions. We're not going to know to what extent they have been cancelled because coincidentally, actually genuinely coincidentally, in their very last earnings call, Disney said they were no longer going to report on subscriber numbers in earnings calls.

11:47So that's genuinely handy. Yeah, how handy, Richard, how very handy. So they said it was less meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses. What would really affect Disney's earning calls, though, is not so much the subs, it's more if people start cancelling their cruises and visits to Disneyland and Disney World. And you know, that's where the money is. And that's, I think, the thing, if that starts becoming attacked, then Disney are in a very difficult position and would have to fight back. That they do have to talk about in earnings calls. Clearly everybody is talking about it and thinks it's bad.

12:19Not that many have put their heads up above the parapet. Damon Lindelof, who did Lost for ABC, said, oh, I won't make a show with them while they do something like this. Probably the most significant that I've seen in some ways, because it's such a detailed thing to say, is Michael Eisner coming out. Michael Eisner, who is, of course, the legendary kind of 90s, 2000s Disney executive who Bob Iger replaced. I mean sort of came out of nowhere to say where has all the leadership gone you know talking about the aggressive yet um hollow threatening of the Disney company yet an example of another of out of control intimidation Jimmy Kimmel is very talented and very funny that that's quite significant that side of he's he's a significant voice in it all can I give an angle I haven't quite seen written recently but a lot of this relies on as you say an awful lot of this is to do with legacy media companies who are consolidating with other legacy media companies because being a legacy media company is very difficult these days and the generation of jimmy kimmels and jimmy fallons and stephen colbert's grew up in that environment legacy media as my generation grew up over here legacy media if you're jimmy kimmel now and it's like oh abc i've got to try and get him back we've got to try and get him back on late night and do this sort of the other if i'm him I'm finally going to take a look in the mirror and go why have I stuck around here for so long why have I stuck around on legacy media where I am constrained an awful lot in what I can do why have I done that for such a long time we had so many years where the right worked out that they weren't really on legacy media as much as they would like to be the big networks and so they were forced online and actually that's how they got a jump on the progressives in American politics and in UK politics in that they developed this online ecosystem where they could say anything they wanted, do anything they wanted, without constraints, without Ofcom, without FCC in the States, all of that.

14:16Whereas the progressive side of things still had that legacy media. So Colbert and John Oliver and Kim and Fannin were still absolutely able to have these big mouthpiece late-night TV shows for years and years and years. Now, we know that the ratings for those are going down and this, that or the other. The ecosystem of online and of YouTube and podcasts and things like that is so enormous now that a Jimmy Fallon could immediately make what he's making from ABC outside of that system. He can make exactly what he's making in terms of his money. He would have far fewer constraints on him. He would be his own brand rather than an ABC company man, which is what he absolutely is.

14:54In some ways, it's going to force this generation of progressive talent to go where the rights went 10 years ago, which is online and untrammeled, the intimacy of being directly in people's homes and through people's headphones. So it might be one of those things where the beast now becomes unleashed. If you've got Colbert and John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel unable to work on mainstream television, then they'll just go to the other ecosystem and talk directly to people, which actually is where culture is now. And it's certainly where political culture is. I mean, look at Conan O 'Brien. He left Legacy Media and his podcast is now getting 100 million downloads a year.

15:33His profile hasn't dropped in any way whatsoever. He hasn't become less famous. He hasn't become less rich. But what he has become is someone who's got more freedom to do the things that he wants, who can wake up in the morning and be a little bit happier. You know, Trump is also saying cancel Jimmy Fallon, cancel Seth Meyers. They've got no ratings and they're hopeless. You think, well, I mean, we can find if people are commercially viable. We can find if people are funny because they just go out there by themselves and find an audience. And I suspect those are people that could. So it might be one of those things that enables a free-for-all and enables this whole new media culture to get started.

16:10I think, in the end, it's very bad news for legacy media. And they're being complicit, I think, in their own downfall. And not for the first time, as we've discussed before. But perhaps now's the time and perhaps we see that this group of people can be much more effective and much more useful and get their message across and their personality across far more by being themselves than by being themselves within that old legacy media system. Okay, I really think that is a very good point. And I think that might occur. But and I definitely think that could happen. Having said that, I do think that late night has had a problem.

16:43Late night has become something that is entirely perceived to be for one side in this entire in the whole of American politics. It is, there is no suggestion that people who don't agree with the point of view, with the liberal point of view, with the sort of anti Trump view point of view, even watch those shows anymore. You know, I've said this before, but if you look back to those golden days and the big late night wars really, and there was, you know, Jay Leno, Letterman, the whole of America watched those shows, as in people on both sides of the divide watched the shows. They weren't perceived to be so completely.

17:16And of course, you had jokes about the president. You have jokes. And I, to some extent, I sympathize with these guys because people are saying, oh, all you do is, you know, joke about the president. It's like, yeah, because he's the president. when I used to sort of write about the Tories when the Tories were in power people would say you don't write very much about Labour, it's like yeah because they're not doing anything, I mean you know sometimes I will write about them but you've really got to mostly write about the people who are in power, I don't really write anything about the Tories now because they're not doing anything.

17:41Exactly, it's a nice thing to do, it's like have I got news for you, it would always be oh another, you're bashing Boris again or bashing the government yeah they've been in power for 14 years, that's sort of yeah he's the Prime Minister, I'm so sorry honestly give us another Prime Minister and we'll have a you know, I'll have a go at them we'll have fun with that but that's what you do if those are the people in power that's the job is you do you do jokes about them and so there is a little bit of that but i do think richard that there is a perceived problem which is that these shows are quite obviously designed for one side so completely and maybe that's because american culture has flat fractured so completely and it's so siloed and it's sort of so polarized that that's all they can be but there has been a perceived problems so the idea of slightly saying like oh wow you could go to youtube and find your voice you've had your voice they've all had their voice they've had the run of network television but but but but because the rights have been unconstrained because they've been in this environment which has not been controlled the overton window of what is acceptable and what is mainstream has shifted because of the enormous amount of of commentary from the right that that we've had in the last 10 years in arenas where at the beginning we people were thinking this doesn't matter quite so much this is quite niche but you look back on that last 10 years ago no that's where everything was happening that's where our culture was we still thought our culture was these you know late night television programs that made people feel safe and comfortable but it wasn't it was elsewhere and so the the window has shifted entirely so the politics of those late night shows have not shifted at all, but they've been seen to be increasingly progressive and increasingly left wing, which is the situation we find ourselves in.

19:21I agree with your basic point, which is they do come from a particular political standpoint, but that political standpoint has been seen as far more extreme over the years without actually moving anywhere. I would say that the political pressure is building and it's coming from quite interesting places did you see ted cruz saying oh this is right out of goodfellas um i mean jimmy kimball once called called ted ted cruz a moist gelatinous tubeworm whose elastic band pants are filled with an inky discharge every time he speaks so maybe maybe that happened when ted cruz spoke out in his defense but um he he is actually quite significant in this because he's chair of the senate committee that has oversight over the fcc and this is this this is a huge test of the right and free speech and the First Amendment.

20:09Yeah, I'm getting very tired of the woke right, Richard. I'm getting very, very tired of the woke right and the cancel culture. But it absolutely is the woke right. There's no point pointing out this hypocrisy because they know it is, they do it. That's the playbook and it always has been. There's no point ever crying hypocrisy. But there are some people on the right who do actually very strongly and fervently believe in free speech rather than just as something to say to own the libs. They actually do believe in it and they have been energised by this. I think there's probably a feeling abroad in Hollywood that if you don't stand up now, when do you stand up?

20:44Because this is such a clear example of political interference. Colbert, you can maybe sort of think, oh, it was failing anyway. And I get it was time. And I mean, I don't think it's quite right, but I can see what that has happened. We can all see what's happened. And everyone on the right and left absolutely understands what's happened. But also wake up. It's appeasement. it doesn't work you've seen what happens with this guy it never works you've seen what happens with trump you know no sooner has he has this happened than he's saying well maybe other people's licenses should be taken away oh also i don't like the view it's like wow you've come for big show now you're gonna do loose women you know i mean it's obviously ridiculous it's so pathetic anybody who thinks that he won't keep going anybody he is like us he is of a generation where he still thinks that these big networks are important yeah he still thinks that that the view and and late night tv that's that's what he grew up with that's what that's what he understands so that's what he goes for and attacks the second you're out outside of that ecosystem his power is gone his power completely goes all he can do is control you if you're on one of these big legacy media companies that's that's that's the only leverage i feel like he controls quite a few of the podcasters too you know he can't take them off air there's no button that can be pressed that takes him off air When this story first broke, the first couple of days, I thought, well, I can't see the way back, but they're going to now have, they are going to have to find a way to put him back on air.

22:08I totally agree with you that he may say, you know what, I don't even want to. It's hard to set yourself up immediately, and it will take a while in a different format, and he might decide to go to YouTube or something like that. But he, it's hard to do that immediately. You don't want to look like you've been run out of town by Donald Trump. Well, I think you could say if you immediately launch with something massive and there'll be plenty of money out there for Kimmel and Colbert and all of those writers, you know, there'll be money out there to create something in this new ecosystem that we live in.

22:41And there'll be plenty of venture capitalist money out there. You know, there's cash out there and there are audiences out there. if he was a young comedian now Jimmy Kimmel and someone said to him would you like to host Jimmy Kimmel live a late night tv show he would say no I would not like to do that I can build my own brand I can build my own thing that's what he would be doing maybe this is the end of the old ways and the start of new ways for that side of the political argument which as you say has had access to legacy media in a way that the other side has not on the political side the other side has definitely had access to traditional legacy media news and what have you but on the entertainment side less so and I think maybe now everything becomes everything becomes the same everything's up for grabs and nobody wants to be constrained no one wants to sit in that ecosystem anymore there's no there's there's no fun there and and people like Jimmy Kimmel want to have fun what Trump is doing just so increasingly I've always felt that Putin did everything before him and this reminds me so much of that um did you ever read that great book by Peter Pomerantsev nothing is true and everything is possible it's absolutely brilliant you'd really like it because Peter Pomerantsev was young his parents were sort of Russian dissidents but he went back to Moscow and he worked as a reality tv producer in the 2000s and it's so fascinating and you know how Russian media just became completely subsumed and how the TV stations that disagreed were silenced.

24:13You know, it's very, you know, he always says, there's a good line in it where he says, regime can feel like an oligarchy in the morning, democracy in the afternoon, monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime. There is that sense of complete kind of discombobulation at the moment with what Trump is trying to do. And I would, you know, it's impossible now not to say that he is moving towards trying to silence anything that disagrees. Now, talking of creative freedom, shall we go to some adverts? Yes, please, Richard. And afterwards, we can talk about Taylor Swift and the bodyguard.

24:47Your pudding's coming, everyone.

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25:58Welcome back, everybody. Now, Taylor Swift has unleashed, I mean, it must be a Monday if Taylor Swift has unleashed another surprise upon the world. We know her new album's coming out, Life of a Showgirl. And she announced this weekend that the official release party of a Showgirl is happening, which is a cinematic experience, a movie experience that she is once again selling direct to movie theaters. Do you remember, just as she did with the Eras tour. Remember, that's the highest grossing concert film of all time. It made like$260,$270 million or something. It's almost like legacy media doesn't work anymore.

26:34It's almost as if. People can take their own careers into their own hands. Shockingly, she has bypassed studios such as Disney and is selling this direct to AMC Theatres who will manage to distribute it for other places as well. And it's going to be a one weekend play and it's the 3rd to the 5th of October. As soon as it was announced, in 24 hours, it had already sold 15 million dollars of pre-sale tickets uh and it'll probably make i would thought well over 50 million dollars in that i've seen lower estimates but i think it will make a huge amount in that opening weekend um this is like the thirsty murder club at the upfield picture house all over again yeah i mean didn't want to say it but yes richard i do reminds us right reminds us a lot of it as for what it is what we know about it is is that it's essentially an advert for the album.

27:24Sorry, can I just say I understand all the context but I just want to reassure people we are going to start talking about The Bodyguard at some point. Oh yeah. But we're leading in. Just making sure. But anyway, she's going to have all this behind the scenes footage. It's going to have the new video The Fate of Ophelia and interview stuff. The Fate of Ophelia is probably the lead single on this forthcoming album The Fate of Ophelia yeah oh I've got a I'm going to do a song called The Feet of Ophelia not such great visuals but it's anyhow it's set in the chiropodist's office therewith sorry please go on no no because you know who's not going to be absolutely ruddy thrilled about this Richard have you heard of The Rock?

28:15The Rock I don't know if you know but he's got a little movie out called The Smashing Machine oh the Oscar guy You know, the Oscar guy. Yeah. It's the opening weekend of the Smashing Machine. Yeah. Can you imagine how angry he is about this now? Oh my goodness. So as I said to you, the Rock's Oscar campaign is going to have many twists and turns. Here's the first one, which even I didn't predict. So I guess they could try and get a Barbenheimer vibe going and call it something like Show Machine or Smash Life, something like that. Once you've seen the Taylor Swift life of a show girl, why not go and see The Rock get beaten up straight off?

28:52I don't know if that's going to work. The Venn diagram looks very thin. Yes. Now let's land this plane. Is this the only cinematic outing for Taylor Swift in coming times? Because last week we talked about Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, the Warners executives who everyone thought should be fired and in fact have suddenly done very well. And as we said, they'd taken risks on quite a few originals. They are also sort of mining the IP and doing various remakes. So you've got a new Matrix remake coming, Practical Magic, Gremlins, Goonies, all of these things are going to be rebooted. And one of the things that they've said they're going to reboot is The Bodyguard, the 1992, maybe not critical darling, but certainly mega grossing movie starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner.

29:41now who has been announced as the director of this the reboot of the bodyguard but a guy called sam wrench who's a british guy and if you're thinking who's he well let me tell you sam wrench he was uh he can absolutely go in with chuck o'demus and pliers and mc hammer it's great in there there's if i if i'm if i work on only connect i'm i'm i'm seeing a wall in the toolbox of celebrity names Yeah, he glitters. But he also is the director of the Taylor Swift Era's tour, which, as we've just said, was the highest grossing concert movie of all time. He's done other things. He did that Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter.