ABC Fine-tuning 'Jimmy Kimmel Live'

Kimmel's in-your-face humor has turned off some of his guests.
By CHARLIE MCCOLLUM
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
HOLLYWOOD -- A year ago, Jimmy Kimmel was the flavor of the month -- a comedian plucked out of the relative obscurity of Comedy Central's "The Man Show" to become ABC's great hope for late night ratings.
The concept of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" (12:05 a.m. weekdays) was something more on the edge than other talk shows. It was (and still is) live, at least for East Coast viewers. Kimmel had (and still has) unconventional weekly co-hosts such as Mike Tyson. The musical guests were (and still are) often up-and-comers such as rapper 50 Cent before he got big.
The show even served booze to the audience. (That part didn't last the first week.)
But the early results were often chaotic. The viewership has been OK -- particularly among Kimmel's core audience of young men -- but hardly the kind of numbers that throw fear into the other networks. The show's co-creator and executive producer, Daniel Kellison, was bounced several months ago in favor of Duncan Gray, an ABC executive who did more traditional nighttime chat fests in England.
Learning experience
"I have a lot more compassion now for people doing their first show," says Kimmel, just before the first anniversary of his show.
"The reality is you have to make a thousand decisions in, like, a two-month span of time. And, you know, you're going to make a hundred of those decisions wrong."
One problem that surfaced early and has persisted: Kimmel's testosterone-driven, in-your-face humor turned off many guests and would-be guests.
"Every night, I pray for better guests," says Kimmel, only half-jokingly. "Some nights, it goes all right but some nights it doesn't.
"What I have learned," he adds, "is that when the guests leave angry, they don't come back. And their publicists don't bring any of their other clients back either."
As for the departure of Kellison -- who worked with the comedian on "The Man Show" and is still his partner on Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers" -- Kimmel says that "when you're getting a show on the air, you have to beat a lot of people over the head. Daniel did all the beating over the head and everybody remembered it."
Introducing structure
The new producer, Gray, says that Kellison "did a fantastic job in setting up the platform" for the show. His role, he suggests, is to "bring a bit of organizational structure and make sure decisions get made early enough that the production team can execute."
That means, in recent months, some of the on-air anarchy has been reined in and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" seems a bit less like an out-of-control frat party.
But there are certain things that Kimmel won't change, including the live telecast.
"Maybe it would be easier to get guests. Maybe it would be easier on the staff," Kimmel says.
"But I really like the idea the show is live, not only because of the energy we get but because it's great to have at least one advantage over the other shows -- because we certainly don't have many."