ABC will not extend Jimmy Kimmel's contract beyond the upcoming season, ending his late-night show after 24 years on air, a move the network denies but unnamed sources say is already decided.
The next season of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will be its last, Page Six reported, with the show set to wrap in May 2027. Kimmel has hosted the ABC late-night program since 2003, signing year-to-year deals rather than locking in long-term contracts. A source familiar with the situation said flatly: "His contract is not getting extended."
ABC's entertainment division pushed back hard. A spokesperson called the reporting inaccurate and dismissed it as "purely speculative." But the network offered no details about Kimmel's future beyond that one-line denial, and the timing of the reported cancellation lines up with a broader shake-up at parent company Disney under new CEO Josh D'Amaro.
D'Amaro has reportedly been offering veteran Disney executives early retirement packages as part of a restructuring push. Late-night television, with its large staffs and studio overhead, has long been a cost center for broadcast networks. CBS already ended "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" earlier this year, signaling that the traditional late-night format is losing its grip on network priorities.
Sources told Page Six the decision is unlikely to be connected to Kimmel's antagonistic relationship with the Trump administration. One unnamed ABC source said directly that "it wouldn't have anything to do with Trump." A TV insider described D'Amaro as politically unflinching, saying, "He's not afraid of the administration... Josh isn't folding."
That framing deserves some scrutiny. Kimmel has spent years turning his monologue into a nightly editorial against the president and his allies, and the consequences have not been trivial.
In September 2025, Kimmel made on-air remarks about Charlie Kirk's assassination, comments serious enough that then-Disney CEO Bob Iger temporarily yanked Kimmel off the air. The network's willingness to bench its own host over those remarks showed that even ABC recognized a line had been crossed.
Earlier this year, Kimmel quipped that First Lady Melania Trump "had a glow like an expectant widow", a remark made just days before a third assassination attempt on the president. Trump responded by calling for ABC to fire Kimmel outright. The comment was not a one-off slip. It fit a years-long pattern of Kimmel using his platform less for comedy than for political provocation aimed squarely at the right.
The broader regulatory picture has also grown more complicated for ABC. The network and Disney filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of attacking free speech by requesting to review ABC's broadcasting licenses ahead of the normal schedule. That lawsuit landed the day after Rosie O'Donnell debuted as a guest host on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", a sequence that suggests the network understood it was operating in a charged environment. The FCC's scrutiny of broadcast licensees has drawn attention all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Gorsuch flagged the pressure campaign in an opinion on presidential firing power.
O'Donnell completed a four-night guest-hosting stint on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" that the network touted as a ratings success. She went viral for performing a parody of the Irish folk song "Danny Boy," rewritten as "Donnie Boy" to mock the president. A source described her as being "in her element."
Whether or not that stunt moved the ratings needle, it reinforced the show's identity as an anti-Trump vehicle, not a comedy program that occasionally touches politics, but a political program that occasionally tells jokes. For a network already facing FCC license scrutiny and a parent company in cost-cutting mode, doubling down on partisan provocation was a choice with consequences.
Kimmel's departure marks the end of an era in broadcast late night that has been shrinking for years. The format that once belonged to Johnny Carson and David Letterman has steadily lost viewers and cultural relevance. Colbert's show on CBS is already gone. The landscape Kimmel entered in 2003 no longer exists, and the audience that remains has little patience for monologues that read like Democratic National Committee talking points. It mirrors a broader pattern of veteran broadcasters leaving the air as the economics of traditional television shift beneath them.
The network's denial is worth reading carefully. The spokesperson did not say Kimmel's contract had been extended. Did not say negotiations were underway. Did not say the show would continue beyond the upcoming season. The statement called the reports "inaccurate" and "purely speculative", language that leaves every door open for a quiet confirmation weeks or months from now.
Kimmel himself has not publicly addressed the reporting. His silence, combined with the network's carefully hedged denial, does not inspire confidence that ABC plans to keep the show alive past May 2027.
The question of whether politics played a role in the decision may never get a clean answer. D'Amaro's allies insist cost-cutting is the driver, and that may well be true. But Kimmel made himself a political lightning rod by choice, not by accident. He used a comedy show to call the First Lady an "expectant widow," joked about a political figure's assassination, and turned his guest-host slot into a platform for anti-Trump parody. When a host makes those choices, the political fallout becomes part of the business calculation whether the network admits it or not. It is the kind of high-profile departure from a prominent role that echoes similar exits across institutions adjusting to new leadership realities.
Late-night television didn't have to become a progressive lecture hall. Kimmel helped make it one. Now the bill is coming due.