Just a few weeks ago, the future of Jimmy Kimmel as a late-night talk show host was in question. He had been suspended from his self-titled show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! And whether he would ever come back was unknown. It was certainly a wild few days for Kimmel, but potentially not as crazy as the story of how he got the job in the first place. A situation that apparently had him stealing the job away from Jon Stewart.
In an appearance on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Kimmel told the story of how he got hired as the host of ABC’s first traditional late-night talk show. Kimmel credits producer Michael Davies, who had hired Kimmel to co-host Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein’s Money, for suggesting him to ABC President Lloyd Braun. Kimmel added that Jon Stewart nearly had the job locked up when things changed. Kimmel said:
They were almost about to hire Jon Stewart, and Jon and I had the same manager, James “Baby Doll” Dixon.” And James was about to close this deal for Jon to host the show, and Michael [Davies] said, ‘I want you to watch a tape of this other guy. And Lloyd watched the tape and was like, ‘I think this might be the guy.’ And he brought the tape to Bob Iger, and Iger said, ‘Yeah, I think this might be the guy.’
Jon Stewart had only been hosting The Daily Show for a couple of years at the point this would have been happening. Somewhat ironically, it was a job he got after the previous Daily Show host, Craig Kilborn, had been hired away to host the show following David Letterman's new show on CBS. ABC only moved forward with its late-night talk show that Kimmel ended up hosting after Letterman decided to go to CBS and not ABC.
Kimmel admits he had no idea he had even been suggested as the host, as it wasn’t public knowledge at the time that ABC was looking to replace Politically Incorrect or that "they wanted a traditional late-night talk show." The show would eventually be moved into the Nightline time slot to compete directly with other major late-night shows.
According to Kimmel, ABC brought him into a meeting under false pretenses to discuss hosting a Thursday night variety show. He apparently spent that meeting talking about David Letterman, Kimmel’s talk show idol, with the President of ABC, and the discussion of hosting any sort of a show never came up.
Kimmel says he first heard about the late-night show because the secretary to the President of ABC was married to his The Man Show co-host, Adam Carolla, who was also friends with Kimmel’s wife. Ultimately, he was hired, which put his manager in an awkward position. Kimmel continued:
It was a very strange thing because Jon and I had the same manager. Now he’s in the difficult position of having to tell Jon, like, ‘You’re not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.’ That was a mistake, by the way, they definitely should have hired Jon.
Jon Stewart, of course, was fine without it. He transformed The Daily Show into a late-night heavyweight in its own right. He's now back hosting the show after a stint with Apple TV+. Although that does raise questions about why ABC decided to go with Kimmel, a relative unknown at the time, over the better-known Stewart. It turns out Kimmel himself asked Disney CEO Bob Iger that question once, and got a somewhat blunt answer:
Bob later said, I said, ‘What was it? This was quite a leap that you guys made. I was on The Man Show. I was doing football picks on Fox NFL Sunday. What was it?’ And he goes, ‘Well, you were cheaper.’ And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn’t kidding.
Kimmel may have been cheaper at the time, but a quarter century later, it does appear that money was well spent.
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