Disney president says Jimmy Kimmel's good YouTube numbers don't really matter in the long run

“I’m certainly not gonna make that announcement with you here today,” Walden said in at a Bloomberg conference this week (per LateNighter). “The truth is, it’s a very challenging day part, late night.”

Walden’s comments come as ABC is reportedly in negotiations with Kimmel, which supposedly include a request that Live! make some pretty hefty budget cuts (allegedly about 20 percent of its current operating cost) in exchange for a one-year renewal. All of which has, of course, been complicated massively by a whole host of other factors, including politics—with Kimmel one of the most vocal and visible opponents of the Trump administration currently operating in mainstream media—and his long-time friendship with higher-ups at ABC. (Walden says she considers herself to have a “great friendship” with Kimmel, who’s often served as the de facto face of the network at everything from Upfronts to his regular Oscars-hosting gig.) 

One interesting part of the whole conversation centers on the role that Kimmel’s extremely popular YouTube channel (which has 22.3 million subscribers) plays in all this, which is apparently very little role at all. “Obviously, there’s a YouTube channel,” Walden acknowledged. “Millions of people are watching on demand parts of that show. That is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show.” Even though Kimmel is doing, in Walden’s own words, a “phenomenal job,” with his ratings recently going up, “They’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late night on broadcast television”—all of which is getting calculated against what’s been a reported 50 percent drop in total late-night ad spending since 2018.