Jimmy Kimmel made light of Disney pulling him off the air and Donald Trump’s continued effort to get him fired at Disney’s Tuesday upfronts, joking about how much the target on his back has made him a liability for Disney.
As Kimmel took the New York City stage, he joked that all of the “bulls–t” he’s dealt with in the past year has given him a greater appreciation for the regular “bulls–t” that is May’s infamous upfronts week in the city.
“The president has tried to f–k me twice over the last six months — that’s one way to look at it,” Kimmel said during his monologue. “Another way, you could also say, I’ve generated unparalleled engagement across a variety of platforms.”
In addition to that attention, Kimmel admitted he’s cost Disney “a lot of money this year, billions.” “It is very possible that no employee in the history of any company has cost their employer more,” he said. “Hiring me 24 years ago, just from a purely mathematical standpoint, was the worst personnel decision that Disney Corporation has ever made.”
With that in mind, he jokingly sent out Guillermo Rodriguez into the crowd of advertisers during the rest of his monologue to collect money in a collection basket. “It would help me a lot, if you could kick in a little lecture this year,” Kimmel said.
While Kimmel addressed the heat he’s been getting up top, he wasn’t shy about pointing out the other controversies ABC has faced, including the Taylor Frankie Paul debacle, joking that, typically, to get a show pulled off the network there would’ve been video of its lead throwing a chair.
“As for us at ABC, except for all the domestic violence, we’re doing really great,” he said later on in the presentation.
Outside of ABC, Kimmel fired plenty of shots at the other networks, including CBS, which will see “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” replaced by Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” as they lease the time slot, or as Kimmel calls it the “least likely to offend the president with a rerun of ‘Comics Unleashed’ from 2007 featuring Paula Poundstone and Andy Dick.”
“Poor Stephen — it’s bad enough to lose your job — imagine getting replaced by the owner of the Weather Channel,” he said.
The shade was spread across the other broadcast networks, with Kimmel joking someone at NBC is “f–king the mayor of Chicago” with all the renewals for the “One Chicago” franchise. As for Fox, the “Baywatch” revival jokes nearly wrote themselves.
“Poor Fox was in last place again, and their big plan to turn that around is a revival of ‘Baywatch,’” Kimmel began. “Michael Thorn, the president of Fox, said the new ‘Baywatch’ will bring the California Dream to a whole new generation of fans with fresh stories they can masturbate to in the living room when no one is home.”
