Again, that chart is skewed, with the NHL Stanley Cup Final also airing on ABC, albeit with a fraction of the ratings as the NBA Finals. But even on June 1, without any sports lead-in, Kimmel beat Fallon 2.2 million viewers to 1.3 million—a wider chasm than Kimmel had enjoyed during the season to date. And a good argument can be made that these basketball and hockey audiences are sampling Kimmel at exactly the right time. For some of them, Colbert was their first choice and now they are at least Kimmel-curious. The key will be whether they stick around. Kimmel goes on summer vacation at the end of the month, replaced by eight weeks of guest hosts. Maybe some of that momentum will be lost, maybe not.

Regardless, it’s all good fodder for Kimmel’s recent argument that late night isn’t actually dying, or at least that it’s dying more slowly than many in the media claim. Unlike Colbert, both Kimmel and Fallon generate especially strong YouTube numbers, as well as value for Disney and NBCUniversal beyond their own linear shows. (So far in 2026, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! page has passed half a billion views.) Maybe the consolidation of 11:35 shows from three to two will help keep those shows alive longer. If the genre can just tweak itself to work better on streaming, or hold on long enough for the economics of digital video to catch up to linear, maybe the underpinnings will continue to sustain professionally produced topical comedy beyond the end of the linear TV era.

Or not. But for now, Kimmel seems poised to inherit the rusting crown of late night leader. After all, Colbert became the champ by leaning into his leftie politics. He and his defining producer, Chris Licht, who helped launch Morning Joe on MSNBC before his disastrous run at CNN, recognized that in a post-monoculture TV landscape, there’s no such thing as Johnny Carson—so trying to be an everyman for every audience turns you into a nobody for no one. Becoming polarizing is actually a smarter strategy these days than avoiding partisanship, as Fallon often does, because you become must-watch for a certain segment of the audience, whether it’s Colbert and Kimmel on the left or Greg Gutfeld’s Fox News chat show, Gutfeld!, on the right. The downside of preaching to the choir is that everyone else either ignores you entirely or, in the case of Colbert, the president and his F.C.C. tries to run you off the air. But just assembling a large enough choir in the first place is the goal.

Kimmel is playing that same game, of course, leaning into the anti-Trump rhetoric (often hilariously so) and openly feuding with the president and F.C.C. chair Brendan Carr. Kimmel seems genuine in his politics, but it’s also a savvy audience play. Coming out of the ’23 strikes and into the ’24 election, he went from occasionally to usually beating Fallon, though still lagging Colbert. And then last fall, after the Charlie Kirk dustup and getting briefly yanked off the air by Disney/ABC, Kimmel began to post sustained ratings growth over the prior year. And now, with his position well-defined and the other polarizing anti-Trumper having been canceled for either economic or political reasons (my take has always been that it was a bit of both), Kimmel stands to benefit again. And if and when Jon Stewart ends his second tenure on The Daily Show, Kimmel could consolidate even more of the political left into one even more dominant show that rides out the sunset years of the genre.