Jimmy Kimmel probably isn’t having a bad week. Yes, he’s an awful human being and, as I wrote in a recent column, rather emotionally unstable. He’s currently getting what he wants, however.
Like so many Trump Derangement Syndrome Democrats who have large media presences, Kimmel loves trolling conservatives. Sadly, conservatives love taking the bait and feeding the troll. Unfortunately, every time that the conservative outrage machine goes nuts about something that Kimmel says, we give his lunacy oxygen and him the attention he so desperately craves. I’m quite the attention you-know-what myself — I know whence I speak on matters such as this.
An old showbiz adage says that there is no such thing as bad publicity. It isn’t true 100% of the time — Harvey Weinstein won’t be making a comeback — but it does apply quite often to leftist entertainers. The shrieking, low-IQ harridans on The View routinely spill vile, hate-filled lies when speaking about President Trump, or most Republicans for that matter (they do have some pet squishes). Rather than being taken to task for anything they say, they are repeatedly fêted everywhere outside of conservative media.
They’re all trolls too, by the way.
Kimmel’s faux hero moments among the TDS Dems all come after he’s trolled conservatives. He’s reveling in the praise that all of the leftmedia hacks are heaping upon him right now. Nothing that we write or say on this side of the aisle is going to make him have even a moment’s regret. Right now, Jimmy Kimmel is a demigod in the leftist culture wars. He was put on that twisted leftist pedestal by people on the right. Democrat-loving entertainers are no different than the idiot politicians who they champion — they don’t have any ideas that really appeal to the American people in flyover country. All they have is hatred for President Trump, so they get a lot of praise for any abhorrent thing that they say about him.
Whenever Kimmel gets thrust into several news cycles like this, conservative media folks love to mention that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is ratings-challenged. That’s very true. The show is perilously close to being trounced in the ratings by Spanish-language Alf reruns. Unfortunately for those of us who wish he would just go away, these offensive troll turns for him almost always give Jimmy Kimmel Live! a ratings bump.
For reasons that could fill a book, the broadcast network late-night model is dying. That’s the real reason that Stephen Colbert was canceled. CBS was already in the process of weaning off late-night talk shows when it decided not to continue with a successor to The Late Late Show With James Corden. In the streaming era, late-night franchises simply don’t command the advertising dollars that they used to.
“But what about Greg Gutfeld?!?!?” I can hear people yelling. Notice that I have been talking about broadcast network late-night shows. Fox News may be the 800-lb gorilla as far as conservative viewers are concerned, but it’s actually leaner and meaner, with a business model that allows Gutfeld’s show to thrive.
Gutfeld’s ratings are so much higher than Kimmel’s that the Kimmel people couldn’t see them if they looked up with an observatory telescope. For advertising purposes, FNC’s ratings are largely measured against other cable networks. We all know who rules that part of the American television universe. Gutfeld! is going to be around for quite a while. The longer it keeps kicking butt, the more Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be in peril. The optics of a big-budget network show being cremated in the ratings by a subscription cable offering are beyond brutal, even when the cable network involved is Fox News. The economics are even worse.
We don’t need to try and nudge Kimmel and his moribund talk show off the air — he’s nudging himself. He’s also getting a generous assist from the inevitable death of broadcast late-night shows. A favorite line of mine recently is that Jimmy Kimmel is unwittingly determined to become the final nail in the broadcast network late-night coffin. All we have to do is ignore him and let him do just that.
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Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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