CBS has James Corden at 12:37 a.m., immediately following Stephen Colbert. NBC’s Seth Meyers starts two minutes earlier, just a commercial break after Jimmy Fallon calls it a night. ABC airs two 30-minute shows, news program “Nightline” and viral video show “Right This Minute,” across the same hour — is now the time for the Disney-owned broadcast net to add a second late-night comedy/variety show after “Jimmy Kimmel Live?”
We asked new ABC Entertainment President Karey Burke exactly that question today, roughly five hours or so after Jimmy Kimmel himself schlepped all the way out to Pasadena to introduce the former Freeform originals chief to the Television Critics Association during our winter press tour.
Kimmel did a masterful job roasting his new boss and longtime home network, and then Burke endeared herself to the reporters with her college graduation photo, a snapshot of “Bachelor” night at the Burke household, and generally just being refreshingly open and honest in answering our many, many questions.
Readers can find Kimmel’s best jokes from the surprise appearance here, and the late-night snippet of our conversation with Burke below.
TheWrap: Jimmy Kimmel has some momentum going — is it time to launch a second late-night show after him to compete with James Corden and Seth Meyers?
Burke: I am interested in anything that Jimmy wants to do beyond his show. If he is interested in producing something else, I would be thrilled to enter that conversation.
So Kimmel would get right of first refusal on the 12:30 time slot?
I actually don’t have any idea what our arrangement is with Jimmy, so I can’t speak to anything that’s legal or specific, but I can tell you, based on the relationship, we certainly would turn to him first for any conversation about expanding in the nighttime.
“Nightline” (the long-standing series currently at 12:37 a.m. on ABC) is an ABC News program — would the news division be grandfathered into the time slot?
We are partners. We work very well with– no one owns any of the time periods. We work together to figure out where news programming is best deployed. “Nightline” is an institution that has done amazing work for this network for many, many years.
[At this point an ABC PR rep interjected to remind us this conversation of swapping “Nightline” for a second late-night show is all “speculative.” We know, we know.]
Those thoughts are all pie in the sky, but we love Jimmy. Anything he’s interested in doing for ABC — primetime, daytime, morning — we would have those conversations with him.