Jimmy Kimmel's New Talk Show to Debut on ABC Super Bowl Sunday!!!

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, shown in an undated publicity photo, brings his talents to late-night television on Jan. 26, 2003, as he launches "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on ABC. Kimmel also will serve as an executive producer for the show, which premieres following the Super Bowl game



Hmmmm, I didn't realize that on Jimmy's new talk show, he is going to have a guest co-host each week (Week #1 is Snoop Dogg :thumbup: !!!!!) . . . Hopefully his new show won't be as bad as Chevy Chase's, which only last a few weeks!!!!! But this show is suppose to be live (first truly 'live' late night talk show since Joan Rivers FOX show got canned back in the late 80's) . . .


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Jimmy Kimmel Premieres Sunday on ABC


Jan 23, 2:50 PM (ET)


NEW YORK (AP) - Jimmy Kimmel is live, devouring a burger at a Manhattan steakhouse and talking about his ABC late-night show.

"Jimmy Kimmel Live" premieres with a special post-Super Bowl telecast Sunday night, then continues Mondays through Fridays in the time slot right after "Nightline," which in no way it resembles. (For starters, "Nightline" isn't always live and anchorman Ted Koppel doesn't fancy flannel shirts.)

"Jimmy Kimmel Live" will air from Hollywood's El Capitan Theater as "the first live nightly talk show in over 40 years," according to ABC publicity. (Which maybe it is, if you don't count Joan Rivers on Fox 16 years ago, for all of six months.)

The late-night failure rate is high. Think of Chevy Chase, canned after six miserable weeks in 1993.


"When he came on, a lot of people thought he was going to be really good," says Kimmel. "That's what worries me, about ME!"

But he doesn't look worried. As Kimmel speaks between bites, he seems relaxed, perhaps a little sleepy (jet lag). Even though just 12 days remain before opening night.

And even though his specialty, up to now, has been bad-boy talk radio and, more recently on cable, playing guru to the guy brigade - most notably, as a creator and host of Comedy Central's "The Man Show," where he reveled in something he promises he won't bring to his new show: buxom girls on trampolines.

Despite this note of restraint, he aims to bring an unaccustomed bounce to late-night talk-variety. And he guarantees his studio audience an open bar.

The challenge: broadening his appeal beyond his guy laity and viewers who know him from Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money" and Fox's NFL pregame show - and maybe even holding on to "Nightline" nerds with his maverick style.

"I don't believe that lack of intelligence and appreciation for lowbrow comedy go hand-in-hand necessarily," he says.

Meanwhile, ABC is promoting Kimmel as "Late Night Fresh."

"Fresh?!" he groans. "There's nothing less fresh than the word 'fresh.'"

Maybe he's just feeling a little pressure.

"I feel a lot," he says. "It's like when I was in college and I was a wedding DJ. Even though it was just a job for me, each time I knew if I screw it up, if my record skips or my equipment blows out, I've screwed up someone's wedding. The pressure was really intense."

Now 35, Kimmel is still a hard worker, a trait that contradicts the party-hardy image he took to cartoonish extremes on "The Man Show."

"You want to make it look easy and fun," he says. "The best time I had this year was my buddy's bachelor party. We went up to Lake Tahoe - 12 guys in a cabin for three days. I think that's what people imagine that I am, and it's what I like to be.

"But when I'm at work, there's stuff that has to be taken care of, and I'm involved in every little thing."

So maybe it's like Fred Astaire gliding across the floor with Ginger Rogers in all those movies - whereas, behind the scenes, he painstakingly choreographed every step.

"Yeah," says Kimmel gamely. "A hairy, fat Fred Astaire - that's a good analogy.

"But the only responsibility I feel is to try to be as original as possible, and not to ever steal anything. And that's been a challenge for me, through my whole career, to not be overly derivative of Letterman. I have to make sure that I don't. Because everybody that matters will know it."

Kimmel is an unabashed fan of David Letterman. But there are other broadcasters he admires - particularly Mike Douglas, a daytime TV talk pioneer whose guests ran the gamut and who, to keep things fresh, teamed up with a different celebrity co-host for a week at a time.

Kimmel, too, will book weeklong celebrity co-hosts. (First week: Snoop Dogg.)

Another policy he's borrowing: "No cards with questions on them! Mike Douglas just did the interview, just went with things. It's not like that on talk shows anymore. They're pretty regimented, very highly produced.

"He was real good," Kimmel affectionately says. "I remember pretending to be sick because Steve Garvey was gonna be on 'Mike Douglas' and I wanted to see it. Staying home from school is a great association with Mike Douglas."

A Brooklyn native, Kimmel grew up in Las Vegas, where he and his pals "took advantage of everything the city has to offer. There was no rule that said you had to be a tourist to eat a $2 steak dinner at the Horseshoe - every night for like 35 nights in a row one summer. That's Vegas!"

Leap forward a few years and Kimmel is a rising TV star about to invade the late-night kingdom. But fame and fortune can't undo those formative years or compromise the inner guy that got him where he is. Not Kimmel, who savors memories of a $2 steak while feasting on a burger that costs 12 bucks.

 

sds70,

Forgot Arsenio Hall, who succeeded Joan Rivers on Fox?

 

WSOCwussed out

It's not on TV. They're showing Cheers rerun instead.

I fuckin hate Ch. 9.

 

WTF . . . Cheers instead of JIMMY KIMMEL . . . What the $(#&&&#$&#*$&$&$#&$#$ ? ? ?

 

Just called the station . . . got bumped to a voice mail system . . . This blows !!!!!!!

 

Bump . . . . Here's the e-mail I got from WSOC-TV today . . . They are in negotiations about having too give up an extra 30 mins. of programming at night . . . WTF ? ? They knew about this move last summer right? Whoppty doo, they have to sacrifice showing 1 extra informercial late night, which I'm sure few folks are watching . . . Why don't they just preempt a 30 min. block of WORLD NEWS NOW (the overnight show) ? ? ? .. . .


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This is a complicated situation. We are still underway with discussions with the network. There are issues with a new one hour show in late fringe and the returning of a half hour back to the network. It is a local decision. Coincidentally our other COX owned ABC stations in Atlanta and Orlando are wrestling with similar issues. We are working hard as a company to resolve this issue for our viewers and to come to terms with our late night programming line-up.

We do appreciate your comments to WSOCTV, Channel 9.

 

Bump again . . . Here is the lady who e-mailed me . . . [email protected]

 

Wasn't it THE _______ NORTH REPORT . . . It was done out of the same studios Joan Rivers show was taped out of ? ? ? It was hosted by 2 guys if I remember correctly . . .

 

Bump . . .. This morning at work on CNN Headline News, I saw that on the show, Jimmy & Snoop Dogg (cohost this week) have been giving their guests free booze when they come on stage !!!!! But it looks like the suits at ABC are going to put a stop to this ASAP; If I heard correctly one of the studio audience members ended up barfing on one of the execs from ABC/WALT DISNEY . . . Oh well, I'm sure it was a nice twist while it lasted (i.e. don't give me the liberal crap that kids could be watching grown adults drink . . . kids should be in bed by now anyhow . . . Remember when guests regularly smoked on late night talk shows?) . . . Too bad none of us in Charlotte saw any of this neither (Memo to WSOC: Stop screwing around and get JIMMY KIMMEL on Now !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

 

Another bump . . . . Here's an article with more details . . . .


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Jimmy Kimmel's ABC Talk Show 'Bar' Closes


By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) - It's last call at Jimmy Kimmel's new ABC talk show.

After a boisterous premiere during which actor George Clooney passed around a bottle of vodka and an audience member vomited, the bar that serves drinks to audience members has been shut down.

Kimmel's late-night talk show, to run regularly on weeknights, premiered early Monday two hours after the end of the Super Bowl and was seen by an average of 4.8 million viewers.

Besides Clooney pouring drinks, rapper Snoop Dogg tested censors by several times making an on-camera obscene gesture.


"We were not comfortable with the systems in place for serving wine and beer," ABC spokesman Kevin Brockman said.

Daniel Kellison, the show's executive producer, said, "They just said 'let's chill out on it and take it away for now,' and we said fine. We have bigger fish to fry."

ABC is hoping to build a late-night franchise by replacing "Politically Incorrect" with a new show led by Kimmel, former co-host of "The Man Show" on Comedy Central. ABC had resisted letting the show operate a bar in the first place, but Kellison pointed out drinks are served at the Disney-owned California Angels' games.

Kimmel, speaking earlier this month, said he wanted to make going to the show a more pleasant experience than it normally is for audience members.

"You stand out there for three hours," he said. "They poke you with cattle prods to get in, and then you're forced to laugh and applaud at certain times. I want to make it more of an evening out where people actually enjoy themselves from the beginning of the experience until the end."

Drinks aren't served to audience members at Jay Leno's "Tonight" show and David Letterman's "Late Show." On-air guests at "Tonight" are asked backstage if they want a drink; Letterman's people won't ask, but will get something if it's requested.

Last June, "Tonight" show guest Tom Green got progressively drunk on the air as a gimmick, an experiment thought to quickly spiral out of control.

For a new show seeking attention like Kimmel's, publicity about a raucous opening night and bar shutdown might not necessarily be a bad thing.

"It gives us some stature in terms of people thinking this is a different show and not a conventional talk show," Kellison said. "Honestly, what we want to do is create a place where the young audience and young talent feel like this is a fun place to come."