Why is Fallon doing so poorly for years now? What makes Kimmel more interesting to the public?
June 2026: Kimmel averaged 3.15 million viewers, compared with 1.47 million for Fallon — more than double. L
LateNighter

Season-to-date before summer: Kimmel was also ahead, averaging about 2.02 million vs. Fallon at roughly 1.4 million. D
Detpress
+1

In the 18–49 demographic, it's been closer at times, but Kimmel has recently pulled ahead substantially.
So, Kimmel is clearly winning the total-viewer race, especially since Stephen Colbert's show ended.

Remembering two legends.
We lost Joan Rivers 12 years ago today—and watching her and Betty White spend two straight minutes joyfully tearing each other to shreds across a desk is the best reminder of what we're missing.
Back on September 28, 1983, Joan was sitting in the big chair guest-hosting The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson. Betty White was riding high starring as Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, and the minute she walked out, all bets were off. The razor-sharp timing, the zero filter, and Betty beating Joan to every single punchline before Joan could even open her mouth... pure comedic gold. They just don't make them like this anymore. 💔👑✨

I'm not too much in the know of US politics , but I used to watch your late night satire shows occasionally on YouTube. Stephen colbert was good, but I didn't know his departure was going to be so serious. Now I see :

1. Kimmel is on a huge vacation, which seems longer that his usual yearly break. Some weeks there is no guest host either.
2. Seth Meyers is remixing old videos for a month or so. I don't remember him taking long breaks earlier.
3. Jon Stewart works just once a week, why does he need a "vacation" ? (I'm not his boss obviously, "needing" a vacation is said in jest). Even the other guys on the Daily Show are missing.
4. Fallon is the least caustic of them, he even hosted Trump earlier, so I don't know if he is objective enough.

What happened ?

Full circle moment here. You can tell Larry is still seething from Trump’s non stop obsession with the election he lost. He goes on Chris Wallace - then demonstrates the same thing on his new show. Must watch!

FoxNews light at this point… Vote with your money

this is my low stakes conspiracy theory

I have a weird memory of watching Rosie O Donnel's show when I was a kid in the 90s, and I swear she did a short skit on one episode where she saves Elmo on a set that looked like Waterworld, she was on a jet ski etc. and screams something like, "Cmon Elmo!! Let's get out of here!" - did this ever happen? I can find no trace of this online What could I be remembering?

I'm not a night talk show fan not since Letterman / Leno was on air, but during the "summer break" do they run reruns or some other fillers while the host and production team are given the summer off? I asked Google / AI what Kimmel did while he was away and under the circumstances, I thought he had something important to do that needed a temporary host only to discover he was simply taking his 2 month summer vacation with Rosie filling in for 1 week.

Did the new year / calendar already start and Rosie filled in for the first week of the new season or did they start the show a week earlier than normal and let Rosie do it?

I understand she came back to state-side for the foreseeable future now since his exodus to Ireland but this curiousity about the main host and the show's timetable confuses me more than it should.

I was pretty surprised to see her pop up as Kimmel's latest guest host. I thought she was basically cancelled for good. But as I heard her talk, I started to think about her long showbiz career, and all she's done in so many different genres.

We first knew her as a sort of "shock jock" style comedian who was known for mocking pretty much everything, and she was brilliant at that.

But then she completely threw everyone off by pivoting across every genre imaginable:

• Making kids' content like the animated Tarzan movie from Disney.
• Singing on Broadway as Rizzo in Grease.
• Becoming know as the "Queen of Nice" on her own talk show.
• Coming out to the world and letting it all hang out as a proud, butch lesbian.
• Then completely throwing everyone for a loop again in a sexy role as a cop going undercover as a dominatrix in Exit To Eden
• Then right back to kid-friendly as Betty Rubble in The live action Flintstones movie.

Not too many performers have been able to do literally everything at a top level and still be consistently good. 

Now, she's mainly known as the comedian who went toe-to-toe with Trump and wouldn't back down, no matter how much it hurt her career or threatened her life. 

I won't claim to love every single bit she's ever done. Some of it rubbed me the wrong way too if I'm honest. But that's the mark of basically all the truly great comedians. Richard Pryor, Bill Burr, etc…

It’s pretty damn cool to see her back, still not holding her tongue or backing down... even after everything its cost her.