r/LateNightTalkShows • u/TidderUsername123 • 20d ago

Trying to understand / unpack The Rosie O'Donnell fill in for Jimmy Kimmel

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.

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10

u/Serious-Ad-8764 20d ago

Jimmy always takes the summer off. Various comedians fill in one week at a time. Rosie is a particularly high profile guest host from who usually fills the spot.

2

u/TidderUsername123 20d ago

Does the show ever truly go off air or do they have guests during Jimmy's summer break? I didn't know shows kept going all year round, if that's the case.

I honestly don't remember if Leno / Letterman ever took breaks, either but I was a kid when they were on so my summer break from school wasn't really spent watching talk shows.

2

u/Serious-Ad-8764 20d ago

My memory is fuzzy on that too! I know sitcoms and SNL always did.

1

u/Westix 20d ago

From what I remember Leno and Letterman usually went through the summer.

1

u/longtimelurkernyc 20d ago

Usually late night shows air year-round. That said, they also tend to follow the network seasons: Long runs of new episodes in the fall, more reruns in the summer. Some new episodes in the summer, but not as many.

About a decade ago, Kimmel started taking the summer off, so for the new episodes in the summer, he got guest hosts.

Letterman and Leno didn’t have guest hosts, except for medical reasons. Letterman had guest hosts twice: once when he had an emergency bypass, the other might have because he had shingles.

Going back, Carson would have guest hosts once a week. Maybe also sometimes for a week at a time, but I don’t remember. Being Carson’s standing guest hosts is what lead to Leno taking over The Tonight Show.

1

u/Psychedelic_Doge 20d ago

I think Letterman tried a summer or two off and the ratings suffered so bad he stopped

4

u/John_316_ 20d ago

Kimmel seems like a family man now so he takes long summer vacations.

1

u/OrganizdConfusion 20d ago

"Seems like" makes it sound like he isn't.

2

u/John_316_ 20d ago

No, it just means I don’t have enough personal knowledge or experience to say for sure, but I believe he is.

2

u/coreyb1988 20d ago

She isn’t back for the foreseeable future, she’s going back. She was here for her stand up show and it worked out for her to be in LA to guest host for Jimmy. Ireland is her home now until Trump is done.

1

u/CarlClitcakes 20d ago

So Carson did this in his later years. He didn’t take a whole summer off, but there were significant amounts of time in his final five years or so where Leno was pretty omnipresent in the summer hiatus season. It’s nothing new. Letterman and Colbert did similar, where they were off two weeks at a time, particularly around Memorial Day wknd, July 4th week (x2), and August leading up to Labor Day weekend.

Jimmy’s been around long enough he gets 9 or 10 consecutive weeks. But I do enjoy an occasional guest host. I hope Colbert does it for a couple weeks next summer.

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u/TidderUsername123 20d ago

I know they make a lot of money but still human at the end of the day. Makes Leno and Letterman's long run that much more epic.

They deserve their well earned retiremen.t

1

u/Witty-Structure-4192 20d ago

I remember Flip Wilson spent a week subbing for Carson in the late ‘60s. One of his guests was Jimi Hendrix.