First it was Conan O’Brien, and now it’s Jimmy Kimmel taking aim at Jay Leno and ‘The Jay Leno Show’.
The ABC late-night host appeared by satellite on Thursday for Leno’s ‘Ten at Ten’ question-and-answer segment and was asked what his best prank was. Kimmel answered that five years ago, he told somebody he would give him his show. He then added: “then I took it back.” The monologue was in reference to Leno giving up ‘The Tonight Show’ in 2009 to O’Brien after 17 years of hosting.
NBC is pushing to end the prime-time show hosted by Leno and move him to 11:30 PM EST. O’Brien and ‘Tonight’ will then move to a midnight slot. The plan, however, was rejected by O’Brien. Currently, the network is negotiating with the two hosts.
Kimmel fired off another joke, saying that Leno had “$800 million, for God’s sake”, and urged him to leave other talk shows alone.
On Tuesday, Kimmel also made fun of Leno on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’. The host wore a fake chin, pretended to be Leno, and said he was going to take over all late-night shows. He added that ABC is an acronym for ‘Always Bump Conan’.
O’Brien had also made a few jabs directed towards the network. “Hi, I’m Conan O’Brien, NBC’s ‘Employee of the Month’”, he said on Thursday. “There’s a rumour that NBC is so upset with me, they want to keep me off the air for 3 years. My response to that is, if NBC doesn’t want people to see me, just leave me on NBC.”
Leno, meanwhile, has also slapped the network in one of his monologues, saying: “Welcome to the new show, ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Off NBC!’”
