Jimmy Kimmel

He mapped his career directly onto David Letterman's path, starting at a college radio station at UNLV because that's what David Letterman did. Got fired from several radio jobs before landing at KROQ-FM in Los Angeles as "Jimmy the Sports Guy," where he met Adam Carolla. The Man Show on Comedy Central followed in 1999, deliberately crude and aggressively lowbrow, which gave ABC enough to work with when they needed a replacement for Politically Incorrect in 2003. His debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! aired right after Super Bowl XXXVII. He's now the longest-running current late-night host in the U.S., which is remarkable for a guy who started by copying someone else's homework.

In September 2025, ABC preempted his show indefinitely after Kimmel made jokes about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The FCC chair, a Trump appointee, publicly pressured Disney over the comments, and station groups Nexstar and Sinclair pulled the show from their markets. Kimmel said he thought it might be over for good. When he returned two weeks later, 6.3 million viewers tuned in, the most-watched regularly scheduled episode in the show's history, even with 23% of U.S. households blacked out. The Senate Commerce Committee called the FCC chair to testify. That's not where most late-night careers end up.

Despite the name, Jimmy Kimmel Live! hasn't aired live since 2004, when a censor failed to bleep a curse word and ABC quietly ended the experiment. Carson Daly was his intern at a Palm Springs radio station in the early 90s, back when Daly was still a teenager. The show runs as a family operation: cousin Sal writes and performs sketches, Aunt Chippy is a recurring target, his brother directs, his sister performs. He has narcolepsy, managed with medication, which hasn't slowed his delivery or softened his politics.