Jimmy Kimmel Slams ‘Nonsensical’ Reports Colbert Was Losing $40M a Year: ‘Not a Snowball’s Chance in Hell’

Stephen Colbert, left, and Jimmy Kimmel present the award for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2019, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Jimmy Kimmel isn’t buying into reports that Stephen Colbert’s Late Show was losing $40 million a year before it was given the ax by CBS.

In a Monday interview with Variety, Kimmel defended his fellow late-night host and said there’s not a “snowball’s chance in hell” Colbert was losing money hand over fist before cancellation.

Reports suggesting the show was losing money are not taking into account various avenues of revenue beyond traditional broadcast advertising, according to Kimmel.

Kimmel argued:

I just want to say that the idea that Stephen Colbert‘s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical. These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows — I don’t know who they are, but I do know they don’t know what they’re talking about. They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions — probably in total billions — and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows. It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works. There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate. Even that — that’s all you need to know. Suddenly he’s losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren’t making any money — and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now. Who knows what’s true? All I know is they keep paying us — and that’s kind of all you need to know.

Kimmel admitted network audiences are declining, but denied that late-night is a “rotting corpse,” which the comedian argued is how the media describes the genre.

“I think if you really look at how people are watching these shows, and the numbers, it’s right up there with the top shows on Netflix and Hulu. Yet in the media, you’d think this is a rotting corpse — which it most certainly is not. It just doesn’t add up. It’s a great storyline for the press, but it’s simply not true,” he said.

Kimmel said he’ll be voting for Colbert at this year’s Emmys. The cancellation of the Late Show came after Paramount (parent company of CBS) settled a lawsuit from Trump, an outcome Colbert mocked on his show.

A merger between Paramount and Skydance was approved shortly after Colbert’s show was canceled.

Kimmel doesn’t plan on backing off his criticism of the president, insisting the country is becoming more aligned to his side. He cited Trump receiving some boos at a recent WWE event as an example.

That moment, Kimmel said, really “cheered” him up.

“I saw him [Trump] get booed at the WWE event the other night, and it really cheered me up,” he said. “Like, you know what? If Trump is getting booed at wrestling, America is starting to catch on.”