New York ? Jimmy Kimmel is live, devouring a burger at a Manhattan steakhouse and talking about his ABC late-night show.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” premieres with a special post-Super Bowl telecast Sunday night, then continues Mondays through Fridays in the time slot right after “Nightline,” which in no way it resembles. (For starters, “Nightline” isn’t always live and anchorman Ted Koppel doesn’t fancy flannel shirts.)

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” will air from Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater as “the first live nightly talk show in over 40 years,” according to ABC publicity. (Which maybe it is, if you don’t count Joan Rivers on Fox 16 years ago, for all of six months.)

The late-night failure rate is high. Think of Chevy Chase, canned after six miserable weeks in 1993.

“When he came on, a lot of people thought he was going to be really good,” Kimmel says. “That’s what worries me, about ME!”

And even though his specialty, up to now, has been bad-boy talk radio and, more recently on cable, playing guru to the guy brigade — most notably, as a creator and host of Comedy Central’s “The Man Show.” Kimmel aims to bring an unaccustomed bounce to late-night talk-variety. And he guarantees his studio audience an open bar.

The challenge: broadening his appeal beyond his guy laity and viewers who know him from Comedy Central’s “Win Ben Stein’s Money” and Fox’s NFL pregame show — and maybe even holding on to “Nightline” nerds with his maverick style.

“I don’t believe that lack of intelligence and appreciation for lowbrow comedy go hand-in-hand necessarily,” he says.

Meanwhile, ABC is promoting Kimmel as “Late Night Fresh.”

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel will bring his talents to late-night television Sunday as he launches Jimmy

“Fresh?!” he groans. “There’s nothing less fresh than the word ‘fresh.'”

Kimmel, 35, is a hard worker, a trait that contradicts the party-hardy image he took to cartoonish extremes on “The Man Show.”

“When I’m at work, there’s stuff that has to be taken care of, and I’m involved in every little thing,” he said. “The only responsibility I feel is to try to be as original as possible, and not to ever steal anything.”

Kimmel is an unabashed fan of David Letterman. But there are other broadcasters he admires — particularly Mike Douglas, a daytime TV talk pioneer whose guests ran the gamut and who, to keep things fresh, teamed with a different celebrity co-host for a week at a time.

Kimmel, too, will book weeklong celebrity co-hosts. (First week: Snoop Dogg.)