ABC
Exactly 20 years to the day since his late-night show premiered on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel delivered an epic primetime special in which he reflected on two decades of comedy and welcomed back the same three guests he booked for his very first post-Super Bowl episode: George Clooney, Snoop Dogg and Coldplay.
“Right out of the gate, we were an immediate hit,” he told the crowd before reading some of the reviews that followed his premiere, including one that called it a “dead-on-arrival talk show with a charisma-free host” and another that said it was the “kind of mess created by a sick infant with a leaky diaper.”
“And those were the good reviews!” Kimmel joked. “Why these people at ABC hired me, I still have no idea.” Calling out some of the people who believed in him early on, he added, “You should all have been fired for this. And, in fact, two of you were fired for that. But thank you.”