In this articlePSKYDIS your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTA sign is displayed outside the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Hollywood where the "Jimmy Kimmel !" show will be recorded on the first night the show will return to the ABC lineup on September 23, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty ImagesLate-night television has come under fire in recent months.
That could leave advertisers and media companies, already clinging to what's left on TV, with an even smaller pool of options.The recent upheaval in late-night gramming — namely the cancellation of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and the temporary suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel !" — has shown a spotlight on ratings and revenue for late-night standouts and spurred questions of political influence.President Donald Trump, aggressively vocal both Colbert's and Kimmel's bad fortune, has called for late-night shows on NBC hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to be next on the chopping block.The result is not just uncertainty for viewers, TV executives and show staffs, but a pall over an advertising category that's long been a staple of TV."Reaching a lot of people who are engaged because it's TV — or -to-tape — is really important, and when you think it from the media company's perspective ...
the moments are sports on most given nights, the nightly news and late-night talk shows.
That's all you have," said Kevin Krim, CEO of ad data firm EDO."To the people who think late night doesn't matter, they're not thinking the economics and the goals and the incentives of both the advertisers and the media companies.
They're ignoring some of the strategic value of the ecosystem," he added.When Disney's ABC pulled "Jimmy Kimmel !" off the air in September, it was un for days if or when the gram would return.
While Disney reinstated Kimmel less than a week later, more than 20% of the country still couldn't watch the show for three additional days as two major broadcast station owners preempted the content.Colbert's show will end next year after CBS parent Paramount announced in July it wouldn't renew the gram, citing financial considerations.
The company has yet to reveal plans to fill the timeslot or give it back to the affiliate network owner.The fervor around Colbert's upcoming cancellation caused a temporary ratings surge, and Kimmel's suspension led the show to rake in millions of viewers upon its return — way above the average and a missed opportunity for advertisers in the where Kimmel was preempted.Late-night drawTraditional TV viewership has decreased as the audience opts for ing.
But content still garners the biggest ratings, which includes late-night talk shows.As a result, late-night shows remain a valuable time slot for advertisers, especially for a younger demographic."Late-night may not draw the same mass audiences it once did, but the viewers who tune in are highly intentional.
For advertisers, that makes the space less sheer scale and more reaching a consistent, engaged community," said Julie Clark, longtime ad industry executive and current senior vice president of media and entertainment at TransUnion."Jimmy Kimmel !" was considered among the top 10 of ABC's best vehicles for advertising reach, with the show dering 2.5% of the network's total ad exposures, or 11.8 billion national TV impressions, according to ad measurement firm iSpot.According to EDO, in order to generate as much ad impact as one ad in the late-night comedy broadcast grams — that's Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers and Colbert — advertisers would need to air, on average, four spots across competitive late-night gramming this year.
In this case, competitive late-night gramming means everything aired on broadcast and cable TV, excluding the late-night hosts, during these time slots.Brands launching new ducts still get their best success from TV commercials, according to ad industry executives.But advertisers have begun to cut back on ad spending in the face of macroeconomic headwinds and trade uncertainty.
Recently, eMarketer and the Interactive Advertising Bureau each released reports jecting a pullback in ad spending, not just for TV but also digital and ing, due to higher costs for companies brought on by tariffs.As advertisers trim spend and Trump puts late night in his crosshairs, the costs of these TV grams are coming under the microscope.Weighing the costsMedia companies' priorities have shifted to building out their ing platforms in a push for fits.
Pay TV networks still make the majority of the fits, but that number is shrinking."Generally speaking, viewership of late night talk shows has been low compared to what they once were, but it's less a specific host or show and more the shift in how people consume television," said Vicky Chang, vice president of media at Tatari, a digital ad platform.Paramount said in July its move to end Colbert was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night." Kimmel's show will face another test when his contract comes up in 2026."Late-night TV and daytime morning shows used to be two of the most fitable areas of TV, more so than sports because of the big sports rights fees.
Networks typically made a huge amount of money," said Jonathan Miller, longtime senior media industry executive who serves as CEO of Integrated Media.
"Initially late-night shows weren't very expensive, but the costs have gone up.
But ratings have declined so it's less fitable – and hosts still want a lot of money."The focus for media companies is increasingly on content that guarantees big audiences — by and large, sports.
This has led to hefty spending on sports rights over other kinds of content.Weeks after Colbert said this season would be his final, the newly merged Paramount Skydance announced a $7.7 billion media rights deal with UFC.
ABC parent Disney and NBCUniversal last year signed a new media rights deal with the NBA worth $77 billion over 11 years.Media companies are also facing the daunting cost of rising political pressure.Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr have ramped up scrutiny of media companies during the president's second term in office.Last year ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump's presidential library to settle a lawsuit over s by TV anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump called defamatory.
And this summer Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the editing of a CBS "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.Weeks after that settlement, Paramount and Skydance won federal apval for their long-awaited merger.Colbert later referred to Paramount's settlement as a "big fat bribe" during one of his show's opening monologues.
Soon after, the company announced the future end date of the late-night show.Disney's suspension of Kimmel came on the heels of s by the FCC's Carr that suggested affiliate ABC stations could lose their broadcast licenses if they aired content that was against the "public interest." Trump made a similar threat regarding the broadcast networks that he said are "against" him.Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.
Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast's planned spinoff of Versant.