ABC Keeping Kimmel

Looks like ABC will be keeping Jimmy Kimmel off the streets for at least the next year.

The network announced Monday it is renewing Jimmy Kimmel Live through January 2007.

"ABC is on a roll. It seemed inevitable that they'd do something like this to screw it up," the Brooklyn-born host of the show joked in a statement.

Since Kimmel's show bowed in early 2003, it has steadily gained a loyal following despite its late post-Nightline start time of 12:05 a.m.

"The show continues to grow creatively, and Jimmy is at the top of his game right now, delivering a hilarious show night after night. We're thrilled he will continue to be part of ABC's current and future success," said Andrea Wong, ABC's executive vice president of alternative programming, specials and late night.

Per Monday's press release, Jimmy Kimmel Live averages about 1.5 million viewers per night. Early last month, the show delivered its largest audience in almost a year.

Indeed, Kimmel's witty and irreverent opening roundup of news events mixed with offbeat and popular segments like writer Jonathan Bines' "The Pizza" (a parody of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet") and security guard Guillermo's recurring "Hollywood Round-Up" have won over many late-night viewers.

"I think one good measure of our success is the number of our bits that get circulated over the Internet after they've aired on the program," Bines told E! Online Monday.

Bines' "The Pizza" and genre-pushing Kimmel segments like "Unnecessary Censorship" have also been hits on Websites like Ifilm.com.

The show's creative renaissance has not gone unnoticed by Hollywood's A-list either. Jimmy Kimmel Live's guest lineup has seen improvement over the past year, with such big-name stars as George Clooney and Robin Williams dropping by the show's studio inside Hollywood's historic El Capitan theater.

Jimmy Kimmel Live may be best known, however, for its stellar booking of engaging musical acts. Over the last three years, the show has hosted such artists as Eminem, Weezer, 50 Cent and Green Day.

The show even built an outdoor stage adjacent to the theater in a parking lot for bigger-name acts to perform on in front of a live audience as part of the Pontiac-sponsored Jimmy Kimmel Live concert series. Performances from the series can be downloaded by music fans online.

While Kimmel, 38, has enjoyed nearly three years of success on ABC since he debuted his nightly talk show after Super Bowl XXXVIII, his time on the network has not been entirely without controversy.

In January 2003, producers were forced to put the kibosh on the studio's in-house bar after audience members got too drunk.

And Kimmel found himself in hot water with residents of Detroit after he made incendiary comments about the Motor City during the 2004 NBA Finals. "They're going to burn the city of Detroit down if the Pistons win, and it's not worth it," he cracked.

Stations pulled his show after the comments but put it back on the air after the host twice apologized for the joke gone wrong.

Despite the Detroit dustup, Kimmel is making amends by taking his entire show to Motown the week preceding the Super Bowl early next year.