Jimmy Kimmel very nearly lost his job on Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this year for the supposed crime of having an opinion, but it turns out he very nearly never had the job in the first place.
During a visit to actor Ted Danson's podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Kimmel revealed that at the time he was in the running to host the show, so was a much bigger colleague: Jon Stewart.
ABC was looking to replace Bill Maher at the time, and Stewart was riding high on the wave of his ultra-successful helming of The Daily Show.
But Kimmel had an ace in the hole: He was cheaper.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Kimmel told Danson that with Maher's show Politically Incorrect coming to an end, ABC wanted to go in the direction of a more "traditional late-night talk show in that slot," in the vein of NBC's The Tonight Show or CBS's Late Night With David Letterman.
He explained:
“Jon and I have the same manager, James ‘Baby Doll’ Dixon, and James was about to close this deal for Jon to host the show."
ABC's chairman had another idea, however.
"[He] watched my 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.’"
"It was a very strange thing because [James] was in the difficult position of having to tell Jon, ‘Uh, you’re not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.’”
Prior to his show, Kimmel was best known for co-hosting Comedy Central's rather prurient The Man Show—not exactly a project with the kind of prestige Jon Stewart had amassed.
And even Kimmel himself believed he was the wrong choice at the time. He told Danson:
“That was a mistake by the way. They definitely should hire Jon. If I’m in that position, there’s no question I hire Jon 100 times out of a 100.”
He was so perplexed by it he asked Disney CEO Bob Iger about the logic behind the decision, and Iger bluntly told him the truth:
“I said, ‘What was it, like why—this is quite a leap that you guys made. I was on ‘The Man Show,’ I was doing football picks on Fox NFL Sunday—what was it?’"
"He goes, ‘Well, you were cheaper.’ And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn’t kidding.”
On social media, people were surprised to learn the two were competing with one another.
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Emma Stewart/Facebook
"Never knew that was something Stewart was pursuing" —u/RipBright1
"I’m glad John Stewart didn’t get it. I love his format on his podcast and his topics are more important than chatting with Taylor Swift." —u/baggagefree2day
"Jimmy has broader appeal because he isn’t an in-your-face intellectual. Stewart doesn’t have the patience to always speak in plain English or humor nonsense from his guests. He’s much more candid and shrewd
"In other words, I’m glad things worked out the way they did. I like them both right where they are." —u/much_spread123
"I dislike iger but at least he was honest here lol" —u/techauditor
"In TV it’s almost never about who’s better, it’s about who’s cheaper" —u/PrimaryStorm9774
In any case, it all worked out. Kimmel described how difficult the first few years of the show were as he and his staff tried to "figure it out," but in the end the show became a roaring success.
He said:
"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."
Who knew?
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