I’ve sat and watched the bit with Kimmel’s show getting the axe and the predictable response from the far left over it. I can’t help but emit a dry chuckle.
The other shoe, predictably, dropped when the New York Post, the other day, reported that Jimmy Kimmel's viewership numbers have been crashing for some time now:
Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was bleeding viewers before Disney-owned ABC pulled the plug and suspended him for his comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Nielsen data showed sharp summer declines and a year-long slide that leaves him trailing late-night rivals such as Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld and CBS star Stephen Colbert.
According to monthly Nielsen figures, Jimmy Kimmel Live! dropped to just 1.1 million total viewers in August 2025, down 43% from January’s 1.95 million. His August household rating of 0.35 marked the weakest showing of the year.
Gutfeld, meanwhile, is routinely pulling in around 3.1 million viewers on average. Those kinds of number differences mean real money to both the networks and to the local stations as well. With the kind of numbers Kimmel was turning in, and with the downward spiral those numbers were taking, there was bound to be a reaction. You can't sell ads on a show nobody is watching. As CNN's token conservative Scott Jennings points out, “Kimmel routinely angers viewers with his lies & progressive politics, & you can’t sell ads in it because the ratings suck. It isn’t a free speech issue; it’s just business.”
And look, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left was both obsessive and predictably reality-deprived. Apparently, they don't remember Chuck Schumer standing on the Senate floor, just two years ago now, demanding Tucker Carlson be fired. Perhaps they hope we don't remember.
Either way, the double standards being applied here are nothing short of staggering. Indeed, there's a video on YouTube showing Kimmel grave-dancing when they pulled Tucker Carlson off the air. After watching that spectacle, we then recall Tim Allen's show, which was clearly doing well in the numbers, getting canceled, despite good viewership numbers. Rosanne Barr got canceled, despite good viewership numbers, and Gina Carano got kicked off The Mandalorian because she didn't like Black Lives Matter. How about JK Rowling? Piers Morgan? Megyn Kelly? Hulk Hogan? How many more examples of the left calling for free speech to be shut down do we need before we can consider the point made?
But now, of course, the left tells us that ABC pulled the plug on Kimmel's poor-performing show because MAGA doesn't like free speech? I mean, good Lord, do these folks not understand that the internet never goes away, and that thereby we can see their duplicity?
The number of people actually watching over-the-air TV is shrinking as people move to streaming. The major exception to this is, of course, football. That’s for openers.
Add, however, this: Late-night shows in general have been bleeding viewers for well over a decade now, worse than even other shows. There’s this, too, however: Kimmel’s ratings, and Colbert’s, too, started nose-diving in 2015/2016. Gee, I wonder if there was an election in there somewhere. A show centered on calling half the country Nazi simps may not be the best course, but that’s what they’ve been serving up, both Kimmel and Colbert.
Oh, and this is rich; before the echo died from the ABC announcement that Kimmel was no more, we saw a protest outside the ABC studios in NYC, complete with signs, according to DataRepublican, printed by RefuseFascism. Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground bomber and Obama's mentor, is also a founding member of RefuseFascism. Its tax-exempt financial sponsor is Alliance for Global Justice. Yes, we’re talking about George Soros here. Given the speed with which the protests showed up at ABC’s door, one can’t help but wonder if they didn’t get advance notice of the “suspension.” However that may be, we knew they’d be involved here on some level. Let's recall, please, that historically, where Ayers is, Obama can't be far away.
I’m also hearing rumors that Kimmel was seen visiting his lawyer. So I suppose we can expect some legal action here. Not that I think it’s going to go well for Kimmel, should they decide to go with it.
Perhaps the most bizarre thing about all of this is that the same people who were defending Disney from the likes of Ron DeSantis because he didn’t want books in elementary school libraries telling kids how to sign up for Grindr are now trying to cancel Disney out of business. There are entire pages of videos on YouTube showing people how to cancel their Disney and Disney+ subscriptions, with a side order of why they need to do so.
There’s also a move within the ranks of Disney employees, trying to organize a boycott of the place until Kimmel is restored. The positive aspect is that such a boycott would mean The View would be shut down, which would certainly be a net plus. Past that, I wonder if anyone else would notice.
In reality, it would make far more sense to admit that Kimmel's numbers didn't support his budget, just as with Colbert. As Charlie Kirk said about a month ago, “When your show gets canceled because it is unwatchable, unfunny, and losing $40 million per year, that's not censorship; that's capitalism.”
The thing is, we know they’re never going to admit that. They’d lose a talking point… which, weak as it is, happens to be the strongest one they’ve got. As I say, I can’t help but chuckle over it.
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