Jimmy Kimmel is going back on the air. ABC owner Disney today issued a statement saying that Jimmy Kimmel Live will return on Tuesday.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney said in a statement today. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
Disney suspended the show after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened the company with license revocations for broadcast stations affiliated with ABC. After caving to the FCC, Disney faced a public backlash, and many users said they were protesting by canceling subscriptions to Disney-owned services.
The Kimmel controversy was about a monologue in which he said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
Conservatives accused Kimmel of misleading the public about Kirk’s murderer. Carr suggested the FCC could use its news distortion policy to punish Disney, saying, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney.”
Station owners can still block Kimmel show
Apparently buoyed by Disney caving to his demand to “take action” against Kimmel, Carr went on to make threats regarding ABC’s The View and NBC late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. Carr’s threats were criticized by Democratic lawmakers en masse, and a couple of prominent Republicans sided against him. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that “Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this,” while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Carr’s threat to ABC was “right outta Goodfellas.”
Disney reinstating Kimmel doesn’t necessarily mean his show will immediately appear on all ABC-affiliated networks. Conservative broadcaster Sinclair said last week that “regardless of ABC’s plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform.”
Station owner Nexstar helped pressure Disney into suspending Kimmel’s show last week when it announced its ABC-affiliated stations would not air the show “for the foreseeable future.”
Part of Carr’s strategy was to urge station owners to demand that Kimmel be taken off the air. “The individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this garbage isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities,” Carr said.
The pressure from broadcasters came at a time when both Nexstar and Disney are seeking Trump administration approval for mergers. Anna Gomez, the one Democrat on the Republican-majority FCC, said that companies seeking merger approvals are “vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”