Jimmy Kimmel is the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC. The questions and answers below have been edited and condensed.
Q: You've been hosting your show for more than 12 years now. What have you learned about what works and what doesn't?
A: There's a lot of trial and error -- maybe error and trial would be the better way to put it. You want your show to be different, but you still have to fit within the confines of an hour-long television show that airs late at night. It's impractical to reinvent the show completely, but what you can do is reinvent little parts of it. When we started, we tried a lot of things. One of the things that worked for us were these big, scripted bits with celebrities in them. I don't know that we would have been aware of how successful or popular those bits would be, until YouTube and the Internet reinforced that for us. Ratings are one thing -- they're an estimate. But with YouTube, you can look at the numbers. You can see exactly how many people watch something. We learned what resonates, and we started doing more of it.
Q: Do you think you have fans who have never actually watched you on a TV?
A: I feel like I have people that say they're fans of the show, that have never seen it outside of a cab. When you look at the numbers, you realize there are more people watching online. There are many, many millions of people watching this stuff every week. They're just getting it a different way.
Q: But are YouTube views as good as money in the bank?
A: No, that's no money in the bank as far as ABC is concerned. There's really no reason to watch a television anymore. For somebody who's a content creator, that's a very positive thing. For somebody that owns a huge television network, it's probably not such a positive thing.
Q: What do you make of other late night writers who have suggested there's too much reliance on viral videos and celebrity sketches?
A: That's just a stupid way of looking at things. It really is. Should we force the guests to sit in their chairs and only talk? People are not allowed to get up and perform? These are variety shows, and there's more variety now than there ever was before. The people -- or specifically, the person that you're thinking of, who put that out there -- is really reacting out of envy more than anything.
Q: So you don't feel overcrowded in the late night arena?
A: Overall, there are more good shows than ever before. If I think back to when I was a kid, on Saturday night, we had The Fall Guy to choose from. Who wants to be in that spot again? We thought The Love Boat was a good show because we had nothing else. When there are a lot of options, it creates better content. Letterman's show snuck in under the fence. They were doing a show that was not at all mainstream, on a big television network. That's the stuff that you really fall in love with. It's not the mainstream stuff. It's the weird stuff that really pushes your buttons.
Style on 05/19/2015