Earlier time slot for Jimmy Kimmel?

Could Jay Leno's move to prime time have caused ABC to rethink where they might be able to deploy Jimmy Kimmel? Talk Show News has long considered Kimmel to be the most underrated of the late night hosts. OK, TSN will admit that our Kimmel fandom goes way back to his co-hosting stint on the Comedy Central game show "Win Ben Stein's Money." We mentioned the show as a favorite on our web page (this was before everyone had blogs or Facebook accounts -- we had personal web pages) and somehow Kimmel managed to find it and send us a nice e-mail. You know, it was probably even before Google. We're really going back in time here, people!

Anyway, Media Daily News was at the Television Critics Association meeting, which wraps up today, and had this report from ABC's press conference:

NBC's Jay Leno prime-time move might force at least one other network to consider moving its late-night host. Steve McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, speaking at the Television Critics Association tour, said NBC moving Jay Leno to 10 p.m. "changed the landscape."

ABC's own midnight hour talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" might gain from this, he says. "We'll look at Jimmy for different time periods," he said. McPherson said that Kimmel's ratings have been rising recently, though he didn't go into details.

We really liked Jimmy's prime time Emmy special, "Jimmy Kimmel's Big Night of Stars," which was sort of a parody of the Barbara Walters Oscar night specials, but somehow they managed to cajole Walters herself into providing an introduction. Unfortunately, the Emmys aren't always on ABC (perhaps a good thing, since the Emmycast itself was a piece of crap) so he won't be able to reprise it every year.

If Talk Show News had been at the press conference, we would have asked when "JKL" will be broadcast in high definition, already.