Jimmy Kimmel slammed the “insider” report claiming Stephen Colbert’s Late Show was losing Paramount $40 million a year: “There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate.”
Kimmel spoke to Variety shortly after CBS parent company Paramount announced that Late Show would end in May, amid its Trump administration-sanctioned $8 billion merger with Skydance. Not long after that news was public, Puck reported that Colbert’s show left the company $40 million in the hole, year after year.
“The idea that Stephen Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical,” Kimmel insisted. “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.”
Kimmel went on to explain that ad revenue is only one way shows make money, and that “affiliate fees” can also make a show profitable. “It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works,” he added.
Colbert’s show was axed just days after he called Paramount’s $16 settlement to Trump over Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview a “big, fat bribe” on air. Outcry over the perceived obvious fealty move by Paramount, as the company needed Trump’s FCC to approve its merger later that week, was somewhat quelled by Puck‘s report, which seemed to confirm the cancellation was a “purely financial decision,” as Paramount had stated. Kimmel remained skeptical.
“Suddenly he’s losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren’t making any money, and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now,” Kimmel said of his own late-night show. “Who knows what’s true?”
The issue isn’t cost, but “free speech,” he argued.
“I have to say, if Joe Biden had used his muscle to get Sean Hannity kicked off the air, you may be surprised to learn that I would not support that,” he went on. “I would, in fact, support Sean Hannity in that situation, because I thought one of the founding principles of this country was free speech. But people don’t seem to care about protecting it unless you agree with them.”
It’s a strong declaration from Kimmel, as he and Hannity, a Fox News figurehead, have been in a longstanding beef stemming from Kimmel’s joke about Melania Trump’s accent in 2018. Hannity called Kimmel a “sick, twisted, creepy, perverted weirdo” over those remarks and others. The two have continued to trade jabs since then, with Hannity calling Kimmel an “unhinged loser” as recently as March, after Kimmel joked about widespread Tesla vandalism at the time.
Kimmel also declared that despite the changing media landscape, “More people are watching late-night television than ever before,” including during Johnny Carson’s era. “Our monologues get between 2 and 5 million views, sometimes more, every night. Seth Meyers gets 2 million on YouTube alone. We’re not even talking about Instagram or the other platforms. The Daily Show—Jon Stewart on a Monday night will get 5 million views. Then you add in the TV ratings. So the idea that late-night is dead is simply untrue.”
As for the Emmys, Kimmel has made it known that he would prefer if Colbert’s Late Show wins Outstanding Talk Series at Emmys over his Jimmy Kimmel Live! this year. Colbert’s show has been nominated nine years in a row but has never won the category. Kimmel has even gone so far as to use his show’s FYC billboard in West Hollywood to declare, “I’m Voting For Stephen.”
Jimmy Kimmel is standing up for #StephenColbert. The official Emmys FYC ad for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” says “I’m voting for Stephen” after CBS canceled #TheLateShow and Stephen Colbert. https://t.co/TImVNDSelh pic.twitter.com/K1orgDOpQm
— Variety (@Variety) August 1, 2025
Elaborating on his desired outcome to Variety, he said, “It seems like voting for Stephen is the least we could do at this point, and I think it will be a nice statement if he does win. Obviously, awards don’t mean much, but every once in a while they do, and in this case, I think it will.”
And he thinks others are on board with his plan: “I fully expect Stephen to win the Emmy as I think people are very, very upset about what happened to him and his show.”
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