With Colbert’s Exit, Kimmel Is Poised to (Finally) Take 11:35 Ratings Lead

Last week Stephen Colbert bequeathed a box of Iran War jokes to Jimmy Kimmel.

It was a bit, based on Colbert’s soon-to-come departure from CBS, where he will no longer have a platform to skewer his favorite MAGA targets. So why not pass the torch—and rhetorical pitchforks—to TV’s other most aggressive comedy Trump critic?

This one isn’t a joke:

Colbert may be bequeathing something much more valuable to his friendly late-night rival on ABC: a good-sized chunk of his loyal late-night audience.

Nothing is certain in life—and even less so in contemporary television—but if recent history is any guide, Jimmy Kimmel is likely to be in the catbird seat once Colbert is no longer an option for viewers, with every sign pointing toward the elevation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! to number one in the traditional late-night ratings horse race at 11:35 p.m.

And this week may offer one more preview. Monday marks the start of Stephen Colbert’s final week off before The Late Show with Stephen Colbert begins its final three-week run—and in recent months, Kimmel has often seen a noticeable bump whenever Colbert is dark. If that pattern holds, ABC could get another early glimpse of what a post-Colbert landscape might look like.

More broadly, Kimmel has been on an unusually strong ratings run over the last eight months—a rare feat for any television show in this era.

Surely that is connected to the effort by the Trump White House—and its appointed media Grim Reaper, Brendan Carr—to force Kimmel off the air last September. That move backfired spectacularly when Kimmel stood his ground, as did ABC, and the host emerged stronger, more popular, and eager to continue mixing it up in the First Amendment ring with Carr and Trump.

Since then, Kimmel has been finishing close to—and sometimes ahead of—Colbert among viewers aged 2+ and 18-49. On YouTube, Kimmel’s monologues frequently draw more views than Colbert’s.

All of which is to say that when Colbert signs off CBS on May 21, his viewers will probably have a good idea of where to go to find comedy that most closely matches what they’ve been getting from Colbert.

The potential ascension of Kimmel to the top of the ratings at 11:35 may strike some as unlikely because he has been around for 23 years and has never experienced a prolonged period as the late-night leader. In fact, until 2020, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was consistently third.

In the show’s early years, it trailed both The Tonight Show on NBC—led by a sequence of hosts including Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, then Leno again, and now Jimmy Fallon—and The Late Show on CBS, starring first David Letterman and then Colbert.

But Kimmel hung in there and passed Fallon in total viewers in 2020. He has mostly been second in the years since.

All the players have seen some erosion over the past two decades, but Kimmel—who spent a decade at 12:05—has never suffered the kind of steady audience losses that have afflicted the shows on the other networks.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! trailed Late Show by about 2.3 million viewers when Kimmel started. That gap closed to about 300,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025. In that same quarter, for the first time ever, he finished number one among advertisers’ favorite demographic: viewers aged 18-49 years old.

If only a third of Colbert’s regular followers switch to Kimmel, he would be in the strongest position for a late-night show since 2014, when Fallon was riding high at No. 1 with close to 5 million viewers.

There are lots of caveats, of course.

For one, there’s no guarantee loyal Colbert viewers will simply turn the dial to ABC. As network television has repeatedly proved, contemporary viewers don’t necessarily switch from one show to another as much as they switch off entirely.

It is also a virtual certainty that Trump and Carr will not stop trying to shut up Jimmy Kimmel. Perceived enemies of this president may get passed over by judges and grand jurors, but they never slip far from the bullseye of a legal vendetta from Washington.

And then there’s Kimmel’s own long-standing lean toward ending his show—on his own terms. Will a surge to top status in late night put those feelings on hold?

There’s no way of determining any of that yet. (His last contract renewal, signed last fall, was for just one year and expires in May 2027.)

But a vacancy is about to open in the ranks of prestige hosts of network late-night shows—and Jimmy Kimmel has the best chance to step up and move in.

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