This is my first mention of Donald Trump on this blog in over a month and it isn't about the election yesterday. It's about one of his eighty zillion feuds, more specifically with late night TV hosts, most specifically Jimmy Kimmel. Recently, Kimmel said that his relentless Trump insults had cost him a lot of viewers and that he threatened to quit when ABC urged him to tone it down.
Trump seized upon that and told his supporters that Kimmel's program is "practically dead" because Trump supporters don't watch. He said, "The show is dead and so are the other ones." I've always found it interesting that to Trump, one of the worst things you can say about someone is that their business is failing. You'd think the guy who championed Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump University, Trump Mortgage, Trump Taj Mahal and a whole bunch of casinos (etc.) wouldn't dance so eagerly on the graves of others' defunct business ventures.
As it happens, Kimmel's program is very much alive. ABC just extended his contract for three more years and they still consider him a valuable network asset. He's going to host the Oscars again next year, for example. So Trump is just plain wrong there, what a surprise.
Also, if the premise is that making fun of Donald Trump costs a show viewers…well, I'm sure it costs them some. But that probably-unmeasurable loss of viewers has to be weighed against the probably-unmeasurable extent to which others watch a show because it does make fun of Trump. Kimmel, Colbert, Meyers and the others would likely all tell you that they think that's a great trade-off…and in a way, I think that might please Trump just as much. Because he'd see it as an indicator of his importance.
But as is often the case with Trump, there is a smidgen of truth within the greater lie. The late night shows are in decline — all of them — but it has nothing to do with him. Network shares are simply continuing to decline, as they have for quite a while now. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno drew an average of 5.8 million viewers in 1995. The top late night shows today average way less than half that number — a decline one also finds on network shows that never take any political shots, left or right. People just have too many more attractive alternatives these days.
And one should also note that the ratings on broadcast television don't tell the entire story. A lot of it is on YouTube and other online access points. A friend of mine who follows the numbers closer than I do thinks that the late night shows on networks may have the least to worry about because they're so cheap to produce…and they do have all that online tune-in.
Kimmel's three-year extension may be his last as he reportedly has said he has other things he wants to do…and heck, the guy's been on close to twenty years now. When it ends, it'll be because he chooses to end it. Unlike Trump, he won't get voted out of office.