Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren didn’t waste time Tuesday letting people know how she felt about media titans Nexstar and Sinclair’s decision to continue to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live” when it returns to the airwaves.
“This censorship of Kimmel reeks of corruption,” Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement.
Nexstar and Sinclair collectively own about a quarter of ABC affiliates nationwide, MassLive previously reported.
Nexstar said it would keep the show off the air “pending assurances that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”
Nexstar owns two ABC affiliates in New England: WVNY-TV, which broadcasts in Vermont, Northern New York and parts of New Hampshire, and WTNH News 8 in Connecticut.
Nexstar announced in August that it intended to buy rival Tegna, which owns 13 ABC affiliate stations, in a deal worth some $6 billion.
The merger deal must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, according to The New York Times.
If it’s approved, Nexstar would “control TV stations reaching 80% of households — violating the cap set by Congress to protect against monopolies,” Warren said.
Sinclair, the nation’s second-largest broadcaster, is similarly waiting on the Trump administration’s “approval for a broadcast deal and is planning even larger upcoming deals,” Warren asserted.
In August, Sinclair proposed merging its broadcast TV business with Tegna, Editor & Publisher reported. The move came even as Nexstar pursued its merger deal.
In a statement, Sinclair’s vice chairman, Jason Smith, said the company believed Kimmel’s remarks about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk were “inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country.”
ABC initially suspended Kimmel indefinitely after comments he made in a monologue last week.
Kimmel had suggested that many Trump supporters were trying to capitalize on Kirk’s death and were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
In Massachusetts, WWLP-TV, which serves the Springfield/Holyoke market area, is owned by Nexstar. But the station is an NBC affiliate.
“Losing large portions of the country’s viewers undermines the network’s business model,” Andrew Schwartzman, a senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, a policy nonprofit, told The New York Times. “But broadcast viewers are creatures of habit; Jimmy Kimmel is very popular, and affiliates are taking a big risk in taking him away at a time when viewers can migrate to YouTube.”