Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel gave a hilarious monologue at ABC’s upfront presentation today in New York City (the upfronts being the annual event where networks and advertisers engage in a giant coke orgy on piles and piles of cash), taking on such ripe subjects as NBC’s failing ratings, Barbara Walter’s retirement announcement and those pompous a-holes over at CBS. Below I’ve highlighted ten of his best lines, which have been conveniently copied and pasted from this Deadline transcript. Thanks for doing all the work, Jen Yamato!
1) “The reason we”re here is because you are about to invest billions of dollars in a network that rolled a 400-lb. comedian off a diving board last week.”
2) “You know, a lot of people still confuse me with Jimmy Fallon. Here”s an easy way to remember which of us is which. He”s the one who sings and plays the guitar, I”m the one who comes here every year and calls you assholes.”
3) “NBC is on a roll – oh wait, not a roll. What do you call it? A spiral. It”s important to remember when you cancel one Matthew Perry show, three more rise up to take its place.”
4) “Things are looking up for NBC since they finally got rid of their worst shows, ‘The Office’ and ’30 Rock.’ They”re planning a 12-day long game show called ‘The Million Second Quiz.’ The top prize is $10 million, which is pretty amazing. Not the prize, but the fact that NBC has $10 million.”
5) “NBC actually finished behind Univision this year, and they have an interesting strategy for next year. Their strategy for next year is to oppose immigration reform.”
6) “‘American Idol’ will be hard to replace but Fox has one new show with the potential to do it, it”s called ‘Junior Master Chef’ and the idea is Gordon Ramsay works with 9-12 year old kids. They were originally going to call it ‘Mommy, A Mean British Asshole Told Me My Pancakes Look Like Goat Dick,’ but the title didn”t test well with women or goats.”
7) “Then we have CBS, those smug motherfuckers. Les Moonves told CNBC that jokes about CBS skewing old are ‘over.’ Sorry Les, but those jokes aren”t over til my grandma throws away her ‘Mentalist’ hemorrhoid donut.”
8) “It”s been difficult for young viewers who watch online to embrace traditional content because so many of them are masturbating… but we are very excited about our app which lets you watch live content on your tablet or mobile phone. Now you need never miss your favorite ABC shows just because you”re driving again.”
9) “I just want to take a minute to salute the great Barbara Walters. As you know, Barbara is leaving ABC after more than 50 years, to have a baby. My baby. I love you Barbara. Where is Barbara, is she still here? She left…? Well, we”ll have it terminated.”
10) “You have a difficult job this week. You have to somehow figure out which if any of these new shows is going to be successful, which is something we can”t figure out, and we made them. But the thing that”s important to remember is that last year NBC made a show starring a monkey and a lot of you bought advertising on it. So clearly none of us have any idea what we”re doing. As the old saying goes, you can”t polish a turd, but you can buy $100M in ad time on it. So let”s do that. Let”s go in on a turd together.”
Twitter: @HitFixChris