Kennedy Center president rips Jimmy Kimmel’s one-sided late-night programming

Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell blamed Jimmy Kimmel’s one-sided rhetoric for his temporary late-night TV suspension on Saturday at the Kennedy Center Gala benefiting the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO).

Both Sinclair and Nexstar announced last week they would resume airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after sidelining the program due to the comedian’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, which attempted to link him to the MAGA movement.

Grenell said Disney made a necessary business decision by benching the late-night host.

“Look, I think from the beginning Disney made decisions because Jimmy was losing tens of millions of dollars every year,” Grenell said in a red carpet interview with Fox News Digital, although the show’s exact financial worth when taking into account its online presence is unknown. “And I don’t think we should have DEI programming just because people are afraid of political blowback.”

“You should be able to make decisions… We just saw this week The New York Times highlight how Broadway is dying,” he continued. “People are not buying tickets. We’ve got to do something in the offset to change that trajectory. And I think studios, and broadcast studios, anyone who’s involved in entertainment, has to be able to bring programming that people want.”

In the report Grenell referenced, “The Broadway musical is in trouble,” the paper noted that all 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have yet to turn a profit. 

“The new musicals ‘Tammy Faye,’ ‘Boop!’ and ‘Smash’ each cost at least $20 million to bring to the stage, and each was gone less than four months after opening,” according to the Times. “All three lost their entire investments.”

The Times suggested rising production costs are partly to blame for Broadway’s challenges, while Grenell pointed to Kimmel’s “one-sided” humor as the reason his late-night show has struggled.

“Let’s be honest,” Grenell said. “Everybody knows that Jimmy Kimmel is losing money because he has guests that are just one side of the aisle. All his jokes are on one side of the aisle. And you’re just not going to make money when you take 50 percent of the customers off the table.”

Grenell added that the Kennedy Center had similar struggles before his tenure. While the current leadership has not canceled any performances under his watch, several artists have chosen to bow out since the so-called “Trump takeover.”

“And so we want to have a very strong message that says everyone is welcome here,” Grenell said. “We have not canceled a single show. There have been some who have walked away because they don’t want to perform for Republicans. I say shame on that intolerance. Everyone should be welcome here, and we should not care who you voted for.”

Kennedy Center board member Mary Helen Bowers, who joined the board in 2020 under President Donald Trump, said she wasn’t a fan of Kimmel’s controversial comments but also cited finances as the impetus for his suspension.

“Well, I thought his comments were disgusting and vile and Charlie Kirk is a great hero,” Bowers told Fox News Digital. “But I think that, from my understanding of it, if his numbers were bad, and he wasn’t performing, then he shouldn’t be on the air.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Disney for comment.

“The focus is on pleasing the audience,” Bowers said of the current Kennedy Center leadership. “And that’s what the arts is really about. It’s about creating beauty and creating a great experience, but with Grenell’s leadership, he’s very focused on the bottom line and the financial health of the center, which is tremendously important, especially in this time.”

The NSO is celebrating its 95th anniversary season. Featured works at Saturday’s concert included Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol” and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Piano Concerto No.1.” The Kennedy Center Gala raised a total of $3.45 million, nearly triple what the NSO has raised in previous years. About half of those in attendance were first-time Gala guests.