Live Wire

AFTER UNEXPECTEDLY EMERGING AS THE CONSCIENCE OF LATE NIGHT—AND THE ENTIRE COUNTRY—THIS YEAR, JIMMY KIMMEL IS ON TOP OF HOLLYWOOD.

- Jason Lynch

Since launching his ABC late-night talk show in 2003, Jimmy Kimmel has never had a year like this. Two major events, both very personal to the comedian, unexpectedly turned Kimmel into the conscience of late night—if not the entire country. In April, his son Billy was born with a heart disease that required emergency open-heart surgery at just 3 days old, which prompted him to urge Jimmy Kimmel Live viewers to contact their member of Congress and urge them to uphold the Affordable Care Act. He returned to the topic with a vengeance in mid-September, spending three straight nights criticizing the healthcare bill that Republicans were trying to rush through Congress. Two weeks later, in the wake of the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, where he grew up, he admonished Washington for failing to take meaningful action on gun control.

“It has been a year of much anxiety and tumult,” says Kimmel. Yet despite it all, the host is in great spirits. He reports that Billy, now 6 and a half months, is doing “very well.” And his entrée into the national conversation about healthcare and gun control has jolted Jimmy Kimmel Live’s ratings: last month’s weeklong visit to his hometown of Brooklyn was the show’s most-watched week in a year and a half, and put him on top for the week in both total viewers and adults 18-49. On several Mondays this fall, he has beaten his 11:30 p.m. rivals Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert in the 18-49 demo.

Kimmel spoke with Adweek about how his show has changed in the past six months, why he loves his annual ABC upfronts roast (yes, he’ll be back in May), hosting the Oscars again and turning 50.

After Billy’s heart surgery, was it a tough decision to go on your show and let everybody know what had happened?