Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | October 23, 2025
This is one of those things I probably knew at one point but have since forgotten, but when ABC decided to start its own late-night franchise back in 2003, the choice of host apparently came down to Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart. At the time, Jon Stewart had been the successful host of The Daily Show since 1999, and Jimmy Kimmel had been the co-host of The Man Show and the former co-host of Win Ben Stein’s Money on Comedy Central.
Stewart and Kimmel also shared the same agent, and according to Kimmel, their agent was about to close a deal for Jon Stewart to host ABC’s late-night talk show. But then, as Kimmel explained on Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, “Lloyd [Braun, then ABC chairman] watched the tape and he was like, ‘I think this might be the guy.’ And he brought the tape to Bob Iger, and Iger said, ‘Yeah, I think this might be the guy.’”
That put their shared agent in the very uncomfortable position of having to tell Jon Stewart that Kimmel had been chosen over him, although Kimmel insisted to Danson it was the wrong choice. “That was a mistake, by the way. They definitely should’ve hired Jon. If I’m in that position, there’s no question I hire Jon 100 times out of 100.”
At that time, I probably would have, too. But ABC decided to take a risk on Kimmel. And the reason why, according to Jimmy? He knew they had taken “quite a leap” in hiring him, and when he asked Disney CEO Bob Iger why, Iger said, “‘Well, you were cheaper.’ And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn’t kidding.”
And he probably wasn’t. If you’re starting up a late-night talk show going head-to-head against David Letterman and Jay Leno, you may not want to spend a lot of money on a host who could very well flame out within a year. But Kimmel survived and even thrived. “Somehow, we wound up getting good ratings. I still don’t know how that was, but they were good enough to keep us on the air. Even though I was causing trouble once every, like, two and a half months—some major thing was happening. Something that came out of my mouth, you know, and caused a whole thing. It was just tumultuous.”
And yet, nothing compared to the last month. And 22 years later, by the skin of his teeth, Kimmel still has that job. For now.
Source: Where Everybody Knows Your Name
