When CBS announced the cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” earlier this year, the network said the decision was “purely financial,” and has maintained that reasoning since. But fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel still isn’t buying it, saying on Wednesday that “there’s no way” Colbert is losing that much money.
The ABC host appeared on SiriusXM’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast this week and, while there, host Ted Danson asked him directly about Colbert’s cancellation. Though Danson conceded that he should probably be asking Colbert directly, he was curious on what Kimmel knew about the decision.
“We don’t know for sure. But I do know, what I do know for sure, is that some of the information that has been released by the people who let him go can’t possibly be true,” Kimmel said. “There’s no way he’s losing $40 million a year.”
Kimmel guessed that the “real story” will never come out, but maintained that the numbers couldn’t possibly have been that dire.
“There’s no way it’s even close to that. I know how the finances of late night television shows work and it’s just ridiculous,” he continued. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. So when you hear things that are obviously lies, you have to assume that there are more lies behind it, right? And that’s what I think.”
Kimmel alluded to this idea earlier this month at the Bloomberg Screentime conference, when he discussed the budget of his own show, and argued that it didn’t need to be so high.
“If they lost $40 million last year they would have sent everyone home already,” Kimmel said at the time.
You can watch Kimmel’s thoughts on Colbert in the video above.
