Much to my surprise, Jimmy Kimmel – we are told – is returning to his late night show after a 6 day suspension.
As you are aware, Kimmel’s show was bounced last week, after two major ABC-affiliate owners – Sinclair and Nexstar – refused to air it; presumably due to Kimmel’s extremely nasty, in-poor-taste (not to mention wholly inaccurate) comments about Charkie Kirk.
And now he’ll come back on…and do what?
-Apologize and be less edgy? He does that and his core audience will call him a sellout. You would have to assume some would move to other late-night alternatives, thus depleting Kimmel’s already-lousy ratings.
-Not apologize and be just as edgy? Well, as of now, Sinclair – which has 30-35 ABC-affiliate stations (the number varies depending on what source you reference) – which comprises about 15% of ABC’s total affiliates, says it is not going to air the show. And Nexstar, which has at least as many affiliate stations, has not yet said whether it would do the same. This means, at least for the short run, ABC loses 15% or 30% of its affiliates…along with the ad revenue those stations would bring.
Can someone tell me which of those two is the preferable one?
Oh, and then there’s the fact that when ABC replaced kimmel with a rerun of “Celebrity Family Feud, it generated over two and a half times the audience that Kimmel gets (2.8 million viewers, versus Kimmel’s 1.1 million). This means that either Celebrity Family Feud reruns must be amazingly great programming, or that even a silly game show the second time around is more preferable to viewers than Jimmy Kimmel. Which do you think it is?
That said, however, there is good news for ABC. I guarantee that at least tonight, and maybe a few nights thereafter, Kimmel’s ratings will be through the roof – because people will be curious to see/hear what he’s going to say about the suspension and whether he will/will not continue with his hard-left, edgy “jokes”.
The bad news for ABC, however, is that after those few nights Kimmel’s show will almost certainly sink back to its normal viewership – or drop even lower if, as mentioned earlier in this blog, his regulars feel he has become a sellout.
Let’s see what happens….
