Disney Sidesteps a Kimmel Renewal as Failla Cites Losses

Disney president Dana Walden would not say on Oct. 1 whether Jimmy Kimmel will still host ABC’s late-night show past May 2027. A day later, Fox radio host Jimmy Failla told listeners the danger was a hole in the books, not a government cell.

Kimmel has a one-year extension, signed in December 2025, that keeps Jimmy Kimmel Live! on the air through the 2026-27 season. Walden, Disney’s president and chief creative officer, still would not promise what comes after that date.

Disney Will Not Say If Kimmel Stays

Asked at a Los Angeles conference whether renewing Kimmel was a no-brainer after his ratings rose and CBS ended The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Walden declined to announce anything. She called late night a very challenging day part and said the company was trying to honor a long partnership while making the business add up.

That’s not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late-night on broadcast television. Obviously, there’s a YouTube channel and millions of people are watching on demand the parts of that show. That is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show.

Dana Walden, Disney president and chief creative officer, at a Los Angeles conference on Oct. 1, 2026

ABC’s Nielsen figures for the 2025-26 season put the show at an average of 2 million viewers, up from 1.55 million the year before, a 29 percent rise. Adults 18 to 49 averaged a 0.18 rating, up from 0.14. In June, Disney said the season was tracking as the show’s most-watched in eight years. None of that produced a yes on a new deal.

THE SEASON DISNEY WILL STILL NOT RUBBER-STAMP

• Viewers: 2 million a night in 2025-26, up from 1.55 million.
• Young adults: a 0.18 rating among viewers 18 to 49, up from 0.14.
• The contract: a one-year extension from December 2025 that runs through May 2027.
• The answer: Walden said she loved Kimmel and would not make a renewal announcement that day.

A September report claimed the contract would not be extended at all. An ABC Entertainment spokesperson called that inaccurate and said talk about the show’s future was purely speculative. The talks are still open. The public line from the person who would have to sign the next check is that late night is hard, YouTube is a weak payday, and friendship does not close a deal by itself.

CBS Already Booked a $55 Million Swing

Failla’s money argument has a hard example next door. On May 28, 2026, CBS put numbers on the hole that killed Colbert’s franchise. The network said The Late Show lost about $40 million a year. It then leased the hour to Byron Allen as a time-buy. Allen pays $15 million a year and sells the ads himself. CBS called that a move from a $40 million loss to $15 million in profit, a $55 million swing.

WHAT THE 11:30 HOUR LOOKS LIKE ON PAPER

CBS said late-night ad revenue was among the steepest drops in linear entertainment, about 65 percent over six years. Ad-tracking firm Guideline put combined late-night linear spend on ABC, CBS, and NBC at $439 million in 2018 and $220.6 million in 2024, a fall of about 50 percent. Comics Unleashed opened to 878,000 viewers, against 6.74 million for Colbert’s finale in live-plus-same-day numbers and a 2.14 million season average before that last night.

Kimmel has called the $40 million figure made-up and said late night is being poisoned, not aging out. He has also said there is no reason these shows should cost $120 million, because they began as a cheap way to put expensive guests on TV. Walden’s Oct. 1 answer sat closer to CBS’s ledger than to that defense. She never said Kimmel was Colbert. She said the slot itself no longer pays like a premium talk show.

Nexstar Called Kimmel a Public-Interest Problem

The first people who actually took Kimmel off local screens were not FCC lawyers and not Disney accountants. They were ABC affiliates. On Sept. 17, 2025, after Kimmel’s on-air remarks about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Nexstar Media Group said its ABC stations would preempt the show for the foreseeable future. Sinclair Broadcast Group made the same move. ABC then paused the series nationwide. Kimmel returned after a nearly weeklong bench. The two station groups held out longer, then put him back.

Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located. Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time.

Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, Sept. 17, 2025

Nexstar later said the call was made unilaterally by its senior team, with no communication with the FCC or any other government agency. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr had, that same week, publicly urged local stations to push back and preempt programming they believed did not serve their communities. Those two facts can sit next to each other. Carr talked. Nexstar says it did not take his call. The stations still had the power to black out the 11:35 hour, and they used it.

THE YEAR THE STATION GROUPS LEARNED THEY COULD SAY NO

1. July 17, 2025: CBS announces that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end when Colbert’s deal expires, calling it a financial decision.
2. Sept. 17, 2025: Nexstar and Sinclair pull Kimmel in their ABC markets; ABC suspends the show nationwide.
3. Late September 2025: Kimmel returns after a nearly weeklong pause; the two station groups restore the show after talks with Disney.
4. Dec. 8, 2025: Kimmel signs a one-year ABC extension through May 2027, replacing a deal that had been set to lapse in May 2026.

That sequence is why Failla’s “nobody is taking them off the air” line only gets him halfway. The government did not pull the transmitter key. Local licensees did, for several nights, and they can do it again. A host who needs those stations to clear the show is already negotiating with a hidden partner Disney does not fully control.

Failla Says the Audience Math Does Not Work

Failla, who hosts Fox News Saturday Night and the syndicated radio show Fox Across America, spent his Oct. 2 program on Kimmel’s New York week and on the claim that late-night hosts are in danger for mocking President Donald Trump. He rejected the courage talk. “We live in America,” he said. “If it was brave to make fun of the president, it would be because you were under some type of threat or duress.” The only reason Colbert was cancelled and Kimmel’s next deal is in doubt, he said, is that the shows lose a lot of money.

He ran the format through a pitch. If you went on Shark Tank and sold a show that gives the middle finger to half the customers every night, and then served the other half a product so repetitive it feels like a lecture, the surprise would be gone. That can still pack a room in New York. He does not think it can carry network budgets across the country. “Not even close,” he dropped in, in a stock audio sting.

Jimmy Kimmel's biggest problem is he's doing a purposeful late-night comedy show. @jimmyfailla says this formula of intentionally alienating half your potential audience is always going to fail!

More of Friday's show on the podcast: https://t.co/jPZhAoauk2 pic.twitter.com/r31OvMRqVQ

— foxacrossamerica (@FAAjimmy) October 2, 2026

The official show account put the same point on Oct. 2: Kimmel’s problem is a purposeful late-night comedy show that alienates half the potential audience. Audio from Friday’s hour lives on the Fox Across America podcast. Failla’s cleaner legal line is the one that will travel. “Freedom of speech means the government won’t arrest you for the things you say. It does not mean your employer has to continue to employ you if the show is in the red $40 or $50 million a year.”

He was borrowing Colbert’s confirmed hole and hanging it on the whole format. Disney has not published a matching loss figure for Kimmel. What Disney has said, through Walden, is that the slot is strained and that clip views do not replace the old ad machine. In September, Failla had already treated the next season as a creative failure, saying the network wanted to try something different, like comedy. That is a product complaint, and it is the part of his case that does not need a court.

The part that does need a court is the one he waved off. “The FCC isn’t taking them off the air. Trump’s not putting them in jail,” he said. “They literally think that these comedians are under attack. They’re not.” He pointed instead to podcasters who said the Covid vaccine did not work, and to people who lost jobs for bucking a government line, none of whom, he said, hosted late-night network shows.

That last claim collides with a paper trail in Washington. On April 28, 2026, the FCC’s Media Bureau directed early license renewal reviews of Disney’s eight ABC-owned stations, a step Commissioner Anna Gomez said had not been used in more than half a century. Gomez said the order came one day after Trump demanded that ABC fire Kimmel over a joke. By July 30, the agency had taken in more than 150,000 comments on that docket and nearly 80,000 more on a related fight over The View, more than 230,000 in all. On Aug. 18, Gomez said ABC filed a lawsuit against the FCC over what she called a campaign of censorship and control. In September 2026, Kimmel kept a Senate-candidate interview on YouTube and off the linear show, saying he was trying to spare local stations, especially ABC affiliates in Texas, from license trouble.

So the hosts are not in jail, and Carr has not yanked a license. The regulator has still opened the one file that scares a broadcaster, and Disney is paying lawyers to fight it. Failla can be right about the P&L and still be short on that point. They are different fights, with different people holding the lever.

Why YouTube Clips Do Not Pay the Bills

Kimmel spent the same week Walden spoke taping in Brooklyn, a regular New York swing that Deadline-level production math treats as a cost, not a victory lap. He brings a 200-person team. Guests this round included John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Bruce Springsteen, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Robert De Niro showed up with a baseball bat, playing Carr. Billy Crystal, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon were on the dance card too. The room was built for people who already agree with the host. That is a fine way to cut a clip. It is a poor way to sell a national scatter of toothpaste ads at 11:35.

WHERE THE MONEY LEAKS OUT OF THE OLD MODEL

• Linear ads: Guideline’s count fell from $439 million in 2018 to $220.6 million in 2024 across ABC, CBS, and NBC late night.
• On-demand hits: Walden said millions watch pieces of Kimmel on YouTube, and that this is not a lucrative path for a premium talk show.
• Travel weeks: a 200-person Brooklyn move is one of the cuts Disney can ask for, and one of the weeks that still books stars.
• Payroll shape: Kimmel has said a $120 million cost base is crazy for a format invented to get expensive guests almost free.
• Summer already: guest hosts have covered his summers since 2020, so taking more nights off is on the table without inventing a new show.

Oliver, on Kimmel’s couch, suggested his colleague was safe for now and might not be later. Failla called that fear cosplay. The safer reading is duller. Oliver was describing a contract. Walden, the next week, described the same contract as unfinished business. Ratings can rise 29 percent and still sit on a smaller broadcast pile than the show was built to feed. Clips can travel and still pay like clips.

May 2027 Is the Real Deadline

Kimmel has hosted the ABC show since 2003. He survived a format that burned through Chevy Chase in five weeks and chewed up a list of bigger names before the five-year mark. Survival is not the same as a blank check. CBS proved a network can take a No. 1 late-night show, book a $40 million annual loss, and replace it with a rented hour that pays the company $15 million. Disney has not said it will copy that. It has also not said it will not.

Walden’s public test is simple, and it is not Carr’s. What does Kimmel want, what is the right thing to do, and what is the right thing for the business. Failla’s test is simpler still: a comedy show that lectures half the country will not cover a network budget. The affiliates already showed they can blank the hour when the host becomes a local problem. The FCC file on the eight owned stations is the separate track, and it is still open.

The date on the current deal is May 2027. Until Disney names a season after that, the people with skin in the game are the ones who write the checks and the ones who own the transmitters, not the ones arguing about courage on a Brooklyn couch.