Jimmy Kimmel is standing up for Stephen Colbert after reports claimed The Late Show was canceled because it was losing $40 million every year.
Following Colbert’s announcement that his talk show would end after 10 seasons, rumors began spreading that the cancellation was due to huge financial losses.
However, in a recent chat with Variety, Kimmel defended Colbert, calling the claims “beyond nonsensical.”
“These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows — I don’t know who they are, but I do know they don’t know what they’re talking about,” the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host began. “They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions — probably in total billions — and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows.”
Kimmel jokingly said that it “is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works.”
Pointing at the big number, the comedian noted, “there’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate.”
“Network television is declining. There’s no question about that,” he continued. “The idea that late-night is dead is simply untrue. People just aren’t watching it on network television in the numbers they used to — or live, for that matter. So the advertising model may be dying, but late-night television is the opposite.”
“If you look at streaming numbers — how many streaming shows get 10 million views a week? 20 million? Very few,” he added. “I think if you really look at how people are watching these shows, and the numbers, it’s right up there with the top shows on Netflix and Hulu. Yet in the media, you’d think this is a rotting corpse — which it most certainly is not. It just doesn’t add up. It’s a great storyline for the press, but it’s simply not true.”
