Why Disney Would be Smart to Keep Jimmy Kimmel Live!
To start, let’s leave aside the political origins and power brokering behind the indefinite suspension of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
We don’t need to compare it to the suggestion of mass murder of homeless people on air last week nor turn this into a post about free vs. censored speech. These are not the same dynamics. Media is a business environment which operates according to laws of economics and asymmetrical advantages.
Nor should we undercount the repercussions of giving station groups with ideological aims enough power to sink a national franchise and force Disney’s hand here.
Clearly Disney / ABC has to make business decisions just as Kimmel made his own decisions for where he draws the line between comedy and controversy.
If I’m Kimmel, I start a new cross-platform enterprise with Colbert and other comedians unafraid to say what they think, but that’s a different post all together.
That said, If I’m the person in charge at Disney, I give Kimmel a breather and bring him back as soon as the temperature in America drops a tad, and then I go back and drive a harder bargain with the station groups that have a heavy hand in this decision.
Here’s why:
JKL is the 7th best reach vehicle for ABC, delivering 2.5% of its ad exposures, 11.8 billion national TV ad impressions, per iSpot. In ad-speak, the show would regularly deliver 100 million ad impressions per episode; that’s a lot of ad time to a lot of people in a short window persistently.
By revenue it was the 10th-best earner for ABC, with just under $70 million YTD in estimated ad dollars, per iSpot, not including streaming and local, just behind The View.
But that ad revenue is just one piece of Kimmel’s enterprise value for the network.
He drove brand equity and awareness for other shows, and his comedy drove timely, cultural relevance that speaks to the next generation viewers — not the 70-plus-year-old average on the couch, but the young consumers making purchase decisions for decades to come.
That’s why the show attracted brands targeting hip viewers: McDonald’s, Target, Starbucks, Uber Eats, Apple, Amazon. In an age when TV still delivers a huge amount of ad viewership, there are only so many properties that hard-to-reach demographics (younger and more affluent) will actually put up with advertising for. Specifically, livesports and perishable/timely/relevant shows such as Kimmel.
Let’s not also forget 12% of ad time for the show was used for Disney/ABC to drive awareness about its other shows and the show itself was something of a barker channel to drive awareness for movies, shows and other Disney endeavors.
As is the case in a recent post about the losing Colbert—, these influencers of culture have a loyal following habituated to engaging with the show, host and format for two decades and running. That’s irreplaceable magnetism that ABC is losing at a time when it should be used to drive people to pay TV apps like Hulu. Only Fox News has loyalty to the network first and the hosts second and can get away with firing stars without losing audiences.
Again, I have no idea what business calculation Disney execs are facing from the FCC and station groups or the legal costs it may take them just to keep this show on the air, but I imagine that ought to be considered against the reality that franchise players drive enterprise value that serves to help all brands in the portfolio.
