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" We admit to being a bit hard on The Newsroom in our weekly recaps. Yes, it&amp;#039;s easy sometimes to think that Aaron Sorkin lives in some alternative universe, where combative liberals aspire to hijack Michele Bachmann&amp;#039;s debates, but then the real world goes and gives him some evidence that, okay, he has points. ABC has today announced that it&amp;#039;ll move Jimmy Kimmel&amp;#039;s late-night show up to the 11:35 p.m. slot, where it will compete against Jay Leno and David Letterman. This is very good news for Kimmel and comedy and dispiriting news for Nightline, which will be shuffled down to 12:35 a.m. Especially because Nightline has actually been beating both Leno and Letterman in the ratings. The truth, as Sorkin would happily tell you, is that there&amp;#039;s not a whole lot of money in news, or at least the kind not driven by crazed cable personalities: ABC can charge higher ad rates in the earlier slot with Kimmel&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;entertainment&amp;quot; than with Nightline. Even Kimmel admitted, &amp;quot;I think they did it just because it makes financial sense.&amp;quot; The Newsroom&amp;#039;s proposed solution for this, as we&amp;#039;ve learned, would be to make all TV news ad-free by government mandate, in which case all TV news would more closely resemble C-SPAN. Which isn&amp;#039;t exactly a solution, but it&amp;#039;s worth mourning the passing of an institutional hour and, with it, the idea that people under the age of sixty-five might take serious TV news seriously, and on network TV, no less. ABC&amp;#039;s news division regarded the announcement with an appropriate sense of mourning, saying they hope to retain their &amp;quot;loyal viewers.&amp;quot; With the only upside of this that Nightline will get an additional slot on Friday at 9 p.m., when just about no one under the age of sixty-five is watching TV, that&amp;#039;s about all they can hope to do. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a15441/nightline-jimmy-kimmel-11911298/>