Jimmy Kimmel Roasts His Employer and Boosts ‘60 Minutes’ at Disney Upfront

Jimmy Kimmel typically doesn’t pull many punches in his annual appearance/roast at Disney’s upfront, but his monologue Tuesday carried something of an existential edge.

“I might not see you again. This could be it,” the Jimmy Kimmel Live host told the audience of ad buyers in New York. “… I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know a lot of you over the last 23 years — and I also know that many of you are worried that AI might take your jobs. But I don’t think it will. I don’t believe a computer — even the most powerful computer — will ever be able to do what you do. And you know why? Because no computer wants to do what you do. Your jobs suck. Every year, our audience gets smaller, and we tell you it’s bigger, and we want more for less. It’s exhausting, I know. We are annoying and unreasonable, and you have shitty jobs because of it.

“But at least you have the shitty jobs! All those kids we saw graduating this weekend, who knows? They might not be able to get shitty jobs. Some of them might have to date Bill Belichick.”

After a pre-taped sketch (watch it below) where he offered to sell naming rights to his soon-to-be-born grandchild, Kimmel appeared on stage and took shots at rivals CBS (“led by their hit comedy Ghosts, which is also what most of their viewers will be soon”) and NBCUniversal (“Versant is a perfect name. It already sounds like something you subscribed to by accident”), as he usually does. He reserved his harshest jokes, though, for his own employer. Some of his best from the upfront are below.

On the state of network TV: “Usually I come out here to distract you from the fact that we’re dying. But somehow network television — like Jesus! — has risen again. Of the four major networks — NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox — only one of us did not see viewership go up year to year [ABC was flat this season]. I’m not going to tell you which one of us it is, because it doesn’t matter and please don’t ask. Just be happy for us.”

On NBC: NBC’s chairman of global advertising, Mark Marshall, claims his network has amassed ‘the greatest collection of content that has ever been assembled by one media company.’ I guess Mark has never heard of PornHub.”

And: “At the end of the day, this is all just a dick-measuring contest, and NBC still has the biggest one: Dick Wolf, the Michael Jordan of character actors getting murdered in the park.”

On ABC’s dearth of new shows this fall: At least CBS and Fox are making shows. ABC, we ordered one new show, and it’s a spinoff of an old show. Which begs the question: What are we doing here? We risked our lives flying into Newark for this? I mean, if you went to a restaurant and the waiter said ‘Our special tonight is last year’s fish,’ would you eat it?”

On younger viewers’ TV habits: Deloitte just did a survey that showed that Gen Z and millennial viewers are spending more time on social media than watching television. Yeah, no shit. You think we needed a survey to know that? Fuck you, Deloiite! And you know what? Fuck those ungrateful Gen Z d-bags too! Oh, you’re too cool for Match Game? Well guess what? When you have kids and you need that hit of Moana to keep the little bastards quiet for two hours? You’ll come crawling back to Disney like dogs.”

On the forthcoming ESPN streaming platform: “They had a conclave, and a little puff of white smoke came out of Jimmy Pitaro’s ass. And the new service, bringing live content to millions of fans around the world will go by the name — are you ready? ‘ESPN.’ And that’s why they call us Imagineers.”

Kimmel closed by making a rather unusual appeal to advertisers to buy time on a show on another network — CBS’ 60 Minutes. “I know it’s not part of our multi-platform, but support 60 Minutes — they deserve it. You have the power, because you have the money. Support journalism. It’s important, and it doesn’t work without you.”