Jimmy Kimmel Hints He’s Leaving His Late Night Show After Contract Expires

At the end of his current contract, late night host Jimmy Kimmel suggests it’s likely he will leave Jimmy Kimmel Live. The show has been going for more than 20 years, and while Kimmel’s last contract extension was for three years, he told the Los Angeles Times that he thinks that’s long enough. The host, who has expressed an interest in moving on from ABC a few times in recent years, gave the interview in advance of the Academy Awards, which he is hosting. Kimmel told the paper that he has been exhausted by the workload of doing both his daily show and the Oscars prep.

The host has said he might retire before, and always turned it around. But this time, it seems like it’s probably actually going to stick.

“Wednesday night, I was very tired and I had all these scripts to go through — I had to revise and rewrite all these pitch ideas for the Oscars — and I was literally nodding off onto my computer,” Kimmel told the Los Angeles Times. “In those moments, I think, ‘I cannot wait until my contract is over.’ But then, I take the summer off or I go on strike, and you start going, ‘Yeah, I miss the fun stuff.’”

That matches up with what he said after the WGA strike ended. In an episode of Strike Force Five, a podcast he co-hosted with other late night hosts during the strike, he said, “I was very intent on retiring right around the time where the strike started,” Kimmel told the rest of the show hosts. Oh yeah, it’s kind of nice to work.”

Nevertheless, Kimmel says he doesn’t expect it to turn around this time.

“I think this is my final contract,” Kimmel admitted. “I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case. I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live! started in 2003 as a replacement for Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, and ABC’s first late-night show in years. Kimmel actually won the host job from Jon Stewart, whom ABC had hoped to build a late-night program around. After starting off in a midnight time slot and at the bottom of the ratings, Jimmy Kimmel Live! climbed the charts and took over Nightline’s 11:35 p.m. time slot in 2013. Kimmel is now the longest-tenured host still working in late-night (since Conan O’Brien ended his show), and Live! is the longest-running late-night show in ABC’s history.