When Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late-night show on ABC after a near-weeklong suspension, some cheered it as a triumph of free speech over the oppressive reach of government censorship. But I saw something a little different.
I saw bold proof that, despite all the talk about late-night TV losing its relevance, there sure seemed to be a lot of people who still cared about what hosts like Kimmel had to say.
That feeling deepened after watching Kimmel hang with his fellow late night hosts in New York during a long-planned week in Brooklyn.
From the moment when Kimmel visited Stephen Colbert's Late Show to tell him he thought "I'm never coming back on air" after ABC's parent company Disney sidelined him to Kimmel, Colbert and Seth Meyers trolling President Trump with a photo at Jimmy Kimmel Live!, there seemed to be an energized spirit in these hosts joining forces to remind fans why the genre is so special.
Honchos at Disney learned this surprising truth the hard way after they moved to suspend Kimmel last month for sardonic comments he made about supporters of Trump's MAGA movement trying to capitalize politically on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Given that the suspension decision came after the head of the Federal Communications Commission threatened Disney, ABC and its affiliates, it sure looked like Kimmel was about to join CBS host Stephen Colbert as another Trump critic on late-night TV who would soon lose his job.
And then something amazing happened. People pushed back.
The American Civil Liberties Union published a petition of protest with signatures from more than 400 artists, including names like Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Hasan Minhaj and Amber Ruffin. People began canceling their subscriptions to Disney-owned streaming services like Hulu and Disney+, urged on by celebrities like John Oliver and Howard Stern. Republican senator Ted Cruz called FCC chair Brendan Carr's threats "dangerous," and podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump ahead of the 2024 election, warned against government pressure on comedians. Even former President Barack Obama weighed in, calling the situation "government coercion" that media companies should resist.
And when Kimmel returned last month, it was with an emotional, passionate episode that drew nearly 6.3 million viewers to the network – despite the fact that local TV station owners Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group preempted it on the ABC stations they operate, which cover 23% of U.S. households. It was the show's highest rated regularly scheduled episode in over 10 years, drawing another 26 million views on YouTube and social media, according to ABC.
During the episode, Kimmel thanked his audience for standing up to "make your voices heard so mine could be heard" — and they did, pushing Disney, Nexstar and Sinclair to resume airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! in an outcome that seemed wholly unlikely just days earlier.
I'll go a step further and suggest that this episode was also a much-needed lesson for late-night TV itself, which has struggled in recent years to prove it can still matter for most viewers.
Just maybe, in saving Kimmel, late night TV can learn to save itself.
An institution once at the heart of pop culture needs revitalization
Amid all the headlines about falling ratings, production cutbacks and monetary losses, it's easy to forget that late-night TV programs have historically occupied a singular space in pop culture that viewers couldn't easily find anywhere else.
But in modern times, that hasn't seemed true. Cheaply made podcasts and video hits on social media offer the kinds of commentary, comedy bits and celebrity interviews still at the core of today's network TV late-night shows. And these new media platforms have an advantage: they can meet viewers where they are — catching them as they migrate from broadcast outlets and cable channels to the world of online streaming.
In the past, late-night TV stayed relevant by constantly evolving to offer experiences that were both familiar and unique. So, perhaps looking back at that history might offer clues for how today's programs can build a new future for the genre.
Because it needs one. Badly.
The first version: Late-night TV as a place where the cool kids hang out
The best place to start is with the longest-running program still airing: NBC's The Tonight Show, which began in 1954 with host Steve Allen — a pianist, composer, actor, comic and longtime TV personality seen as a savvy industry pioneer.
Like a lot of shows at the dawn of network TV, Tonight Starring Steve Allen wasn't really sure what it initially wanted to be or quite how to use this new medium. And if you watch recordings of the first episode — still available on YouTube — you'll see how Allen's sardonically witty vibe feels an awful lot like the cheeky irreverence David Letterman would bring to late night decades later.
Still, despite the experimental vibe of the program, it featured a lot of elements we still see in the genre more than 70 years later: an opening monologue, celebrity interviews, a live band and a show presented before a studio audience with some comedy bits filmed outside.
Based in Manhattan, Tonight was a transition from popular variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show to something hipper — a way for viewers around the country to soak up a bit of show-business glamour at the end of the day. Big names from Broadway or the sports world could drop by to kibitz with Allen, making viewers feel like they were at the coolest after-hours party in the country.
The next version: Late-night TV as the center of showbiz establishment
After Allen left the show, Tonight's formula was refined through the late 1950s and early 1960s by hosts Jack Paar and his successor, Johnny Carson, the man often dubbed the "King of Late Night." Raised in Iowa and Nebraska, Carson built his career as a host of variety and game shows with an approachable ease, developing a reserved charisma that helped fuel the rise of his show as a gigantically influential program with a massive audience.
The name of the game for network TV back then was material that offered the biggest tent possible — nothing too controversial or complicated to turn off the masses. So the nation's viewers grew used to Carson tucking them in bed, backed by a sprawling big band, with a monologue that gently poked fun at the day's news events and chummy interactions with celebrities.
For standup comics, an endorsement from Carson — getting waved over to sit next to him for a conversation after they delivered their best five minutes of jokes — was an honor that could make a comedian's career.
The list of performers who benefited from that nod included everyone from Bill Cosby to Drew Carey, Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Freddie Prinze and David Letterman. Viewers also knew: the standup comic who was making Carson laugh one night could be starring in TV's biggest sitcom soon after.
Another version: Late night as a home for comedic innovation aimed at young viewers
By 1982, Carson had negotiated to take ownership of the time slot after his program, teaming with NBC to create a late-night show at 12:30 a.m. featuring Letterman. Dubbed Late Night With David Letterman, the show had a slimmed-down, modernized band and made fun of the TV institutions Carson's generation built.
Letterman wasn't a smoothly chummy figure like Carson was on screen. He picked real fights on air with some celebrities — Cher famously called Letterman an "a**hole" during an interview segment — and brought on younger upstart comics, like subversive comedy pioneer Bill Hicks and some leather-jacket wearing guy from Boston named Jay Leno. (Letterman later came in for some criticism after he moved his show to CBS and refused to air a set by Hicks, who joked about religion and abortion protesters.)
Letterman's antics appealed to college students and young media nerds — I still remember watching him lowered into a vat of water wearing a suit festooned with Alka-Seltzer tablets one minute and throwing watermelons off the roof of a New York skyscraper the next. Much of what he did was a nod to the pioneering early days of late night TV with a twist; for example, one "celebrity" he featured in fake ads, Larry "Bud" Melman, was a character played by file clerk-turned-actor Calvert DeForest.
He struck a chord with viewers younger than the Carson generation who yearned for a voice on TV that felt more modern — reflecting their growing cynicism about show business while stretching the boundaries of the medium. That youthful connection continued through other hosts who took over NBC's Late Night franchise, from the serious silliness of Conan O'Brien to the hard-partying glad-handing of Jimmy Fallon.
When Carson retired in 1992, NBC snubbed Letterman to hand The Tonight Show to Leno. Letterman decamped for CBS, where he began hosting The Late Show, a glitzier, less subversive program, from the sprawling confines of the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan. Like Carson, Letterman negotiated control of the time slot after his program to create The Late Late Show, where hosts ranging from Craig Ferguson to James Corden twisted the format to serve their tastes in ways Letterman had become too big to attempt.
An alternative version: Late-night TV upstart succeeds by catering to audiences left out by the big players
Other hosts tried to challenge Carson's hold on the genre, but one of the few to find real success was comic Arsenio Hall, who offered a late-night show syndicated individually to TV stations across the country centered on Black culture and performers too small time for Carson's stage. Debuting in 1989, The Arsenio Hall Show had a funk and jazz fusion outfit as its house band. Its most buzzed-about guests were artists on the cutting edge of Black culture, like Prince, Bobby Brown and MC Hammer (before the mega-hit "U Can't Touch This" made him a household name).
There's a reason why a modern late-night program like Fallon's Tonight Show now has hip-hop pioneers The Roots as its house band. If networks include as many people as possible on their big TV shows, then they don't have to worry about a new version of Arsenio building an empire on performers excluded from the mainstream.
Today's version: The rise of the political crusaders
When Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999 and centered its humor on real headlines and actual news clips, he pushed an evolution nearly as seismic as Saturday Night Live's decision to use guest hosts every week or Carson's move to give Letterman his own show.
In addition to delivering a string of successful alumni to the comedy world – including Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Roy Wood Jr. – The Daily Show helped viewers process events by digging into the hypocrisies and absurdities of politics and media. In particular, Stewart highlighted what he saw as the shortcomings of traditional journalism, the toxicity of media outlets like CNN and the pandering of conservative platforms like the Fox News Channel — teaching audiences to decode this new type of messaging.
In contrast, Fox News Channel's Gutfeld!, which airs at the earlier hour of 10 p.m. on a cable channel and has access to a larger potential audience, seems to benefit from being the most prominent effort to create a conservative-oriented version of late-night broadcast shows on traditional TV.
Politics have only gotten more partisan. So Stewart's approach has spread across late-night TV, led by Colbert's version of The Late Show on CBS, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, Bill Maher's Real Time on HBO and Kimmel himself. In particular, hosts like Colbert, Kimmel and Seth Meyers have become passionate critics of Trump's policies, including his aggressive use of tariffs, his Kennedy Center takeover and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein — but that approach could also sometimes feel predictable and ineffective.
Until the attempt to muzzle Kimmel failed, giving satirists a new cause and fresh passion to pursue it.
Kimmel, in particular, has seemed like a good-natured everyguy who got pulled into becoming a political figure, speaking out against what he likely sees as Trump's growing extremism as president. Now that he and his fellow hosts are in the crosshairs, it's time to use this moment as fuel for fresh satire. Kimmel's bit, on the night of his return show, featuring Robert De Niro as a mafioso-style FCC commissioner was an excellent example — constantly reminding viewers how they can say things with a star power one guy with a podcast microphone can't equal.
Before Kimmel's moment, I thought figures like Conan O'Brien might offer an answer to the future of the late-night genre — which has always been more about a comedic attitude than the actual times the shows air. Since the end of his show on TBS, O'Brien has soared — freeing himself from the meddling of big media companies by building his own empire across several platforms, ranging from radio and podcasts for Sirius XM to travel specials on HBO Max and his own content leveraged across social media and YouTube.
But now, seeing how energized Kimmel, The Daily Show and Colbert have become in recent weeks as big media companies and the Trump administration have threatened their existence, I'm wondering if there isn't another answer.
The allegiance last week among Kimmel, Colbert, Meyers and other late-night hosts — including Daily Show host Stewart, who crashed one of Kimmel's monologues — proved that these hosts and their insistence on speaking truth to power will likely only survive if they stick together.
United, they can create viral events that push through the media noise to draw attention – as when Kimmel ensured that his first post-suspension interview occurred on another late-night show that has been threatened by the president. And when these events go viral, they meet the audiences where they are, as late-night shows need to do more regularly.
And these hosts need one more thing: Their bosses, whose companies own America's most powerful media outlets, must support their employees when they speak out.
As a fan of the genre who has attended everything from an Arsenio Hall taping in 1990 to more recent shows by Colbert, Letterman, Meyers, Fallon, O'Brien and Stewart, I believe that late-night TV is an important cornerstone in America's comedy universe and that we'll all lose a lot if these shows largely go away.
Wouldn't it be fitting if the very attempts by Trump officials and power-hungry media executives to snuff out these hosts help endear their shows to an entirely new audience, eager to hear voices pushing back?
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