Television History in Real Time

Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night television on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, after being preempted indefinitely by ABC and Disney. One of his first things he expressed was, "This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this." 

Late-night television talk shows have always been a potential hotbed of controversy. The story was previously featured in one of the Videos of the Week on this website some time ago, but in case you missed it, here is the story. On February 11, 1960, Jack Paar voluntarily walked off "Tonight with Jack Paar" after NBC edited out a joke he told on the previous night's videotaped show. As he got up from the desk, he said, "I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this." With his exit, he left the rest of the show to a startled Hugh Downs, who had to host the rest of the show by himself with no preparation.

On March 7, 1960, Jack Paar would return as host. His first words were, "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." Jimmy Kimmel tipped his hat to that event from sixty-five years ago with nearly the same statement, "....As I was saying before I was interrupted..." That was an obvious nod to the late Jack Paar and was probably lost on most of the audience. 

As a broadcast historian, there have been several events over the many years of television that still garner attention and are the subject of conversation and further investigation to this day. Events like Nixon's "Checker Speech" in 1952, ahead of the presidential election that year, the attempted cover-up of the US Spy plane being shot down over the Soviet Union, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, and the exposure by the soviets that embarrassed the US government; the Kennedy assassination, and others during the 1960s along with the broadcasts from those tragic events; the Watergate scandal; and many other events. All events I remember being discussed in one of my communication classes when I was at Western Illinois University.

Even though a late-night talk show seems relatively minor in scale compared to the events mentioned above, in one respect, it is one of the most important, as it concerns the First Amendment and "freedom of speech."  It also concerns the role of the administration, the regulatory branch of broadcasting, the FCC, as well as business interests, in a threat to that freedom of speech as exercised by the host of "The Jimmy Kimmel Show."

Kimmel's return included an apparent heartfelt statement that, "It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual."  He went on to talk about the wife of Charlie Kirk and praised her for saying she forgave the assassin of her husband.

The show's host went on to discuss the apparent efforts to curtail our right to free speech in the United States. Kimmel also said he would not ease up on his criticism of the president, despite pressure from the administration. 

What we have witnessed over the last week is TV history in real time. It's something that young people who have yet to be born will be studying and discussing in classrooms in another 65 years, if we're still able to.