Jimmy Kimmel’s Show Is Reportedly Getting Axed and ABC’s Denial Is Raising Eyebrows

Jimmy Kimmel got suspended last year after lying on air about Charlie Kirk's death.

Disney has reportedly already locked in Tuesday's premiere as the start of Kimmel's last season on ABC.

ABC's furious denial swears the report is wrong without ever saying Kimmel is staying.

Page Six Says Kimmel's Contract Will Not Be Renewed

Page Six dropped the report this week that stopped the industry cold.

A source described as familiar with the show and the network delivered one blunt line: "His contract is not getting extended."

Jimmy Kimmel Live! started its new season on Tuesday.

Under the terms reportedly on the table, it would run through May 2027 and then simply stop.

That would close out 24 years on the network, dating back to 2003.

Kimmel has spent that entire run signing year-to-year deals instead of the long-term contracts most late-night hosts lock in.

That detail alone tells you how little job security Disney has ever handed him.

ABC Calls It Speculation While Refusing to Say He Is Staying

Disney's response arrived fast, and it was carefully worded.

ABC Entertainment called the report "inaccurate" and said any claims about the show's future are "purely speculative."

Notice what the network did not say.

It never said Kimmel is staying past this season, and it never said the contract question is settled.

The denial lands inside a much bigger mess for ABC.

The FCC opened early license reviews of ABC's eight owned stations this year, a process that puts real regulatory pressure on Disney's bottom line.

President Trump has repeatedly called on the network to discipline its late-night hosts, Kimmel most of all.

Disney has already filed First Amendment challenges over the pressure campaign.

And that Charlie Kirk suspension from last year is still hanging over the show.

None of that context makes ABC's denial disappear, but it does explain why a network would want to control the story before a report like this one takes on a life of its own.

Last Year's Suspension Still Splits Conservatives Down the Middle

When ABC suspended Kimmel last September over his comments about Charlie Kirk's killer, two of the country's largest station groups did not wait for Disney to act.

Nexstar and Sinclair, which together control dozens of ABC affiliates, pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off their airwaves before the network made a single move of its own.

Riley Gaines called it "consequence culture," not cancel culture.

Dave Portnoy put it more bluntly: consequences for what Kimmel said, not censorship.

Benny Johnson went further, calling the whole episode a "generational culture war victory."

Not every conservative cheered without hesitation.

Eli Lake at The Free Press said Kimmel's comments were "tasteless, stupid and factually vacant," and still warned that "the chairman of the FCC should not be programming late night television."

National Review's Jeffrey Blehar agreed ABC should have pulled Kimmel on its own, then added a warning of his own: this doesn't end anywhere good once the government starts deciding who stays on the air.

That argument never got resolved, and this week's report reopens it.

The Ratings Collapse ABC Was Already Watching

Kimmel's return from suspension did not go the way Disney needed it to.

Within two weeks of his comeback episode, Jimmy Kimmel Live! lost 71 percent of its total audience.

Among adults 25 to 54, the demographic advertisers actually pay for, the drop was 85 percent, from 1.7 million viewers down to 265,000.

The Tonight Show and The Late Show held far steadier over that same stretch.

A host who cannot hold his own comeback audience for two weeks is not the ratings juggernaut Disney wants to keep paying, and conservative critics were calling his numbers basement-rated weeks before this week's report ever surfaced.

Kimmel Would Join a Late Night Graveyard That Keeps Growing

Samantha Bee is gone.

James Corden is gone.

Conan O'Brien's late-night show is gone.

Stephen Colbert's Late Show is gone too.

Kimmel losing his slot would not be an isolated network decision.

It would be the next entry in a list of left-leaning late-night hosts whose shows collapsed as their ratings did.

The Business Case for Cutting Kimmel Loose Was Already Written

Declining linear ratings are not a talking point invented by Kimmel's critics.

They are the reason network after network has cut hosts who spent years insulting half of their potential audience.

Kimmel built a decade of monologues attacking Trump and the Republicans watching at home, then acted surprised when the same audience stopped watching.

A network bleeding advertisers does not need a conspiracy to cut a show that is losing money.

It needs a quiet call from someone above Kimmel's pay grade, the kind of call a "source familiar with the show" would know about long before the public does.

If Disney really is letting his contract lapse, it would not be censorship.

It would be math.

Sources:

• Johnathan Jones, "Report: Jimmy Kimmel's Current Season Will Be His Last at ABC," The Gateway Pundit / The Western Journal, September 9, 2026.
• "Disney Breaks Silence on Future of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Amid Escalating Trump and FCC Feud," Inside The Magic, September 10, 2026.
• "ABC says 'Jimmy Kimmel' ending report 'inaccurate,'" Fox 56 News, September 2026.
• John Nolte, "Nolte: Basement-Rated Jimmy Kimmel Talks About Retiring," Breitbart, August 25, 2026.
• "Jimmy Kimmel Ratings Crater, Drops 85% of Key Viewers Since Return to Late Night Disney TV," That Park Place, 2025.
• "Jimmy Kimmel benching prompts celebration, also caution, from conservatives," Fox News, 2025.