There are many household names in the corporate media landscape, conglomerations like News Corp or Comcast that control the world’s flow of information and entertainment. But Americans are learning a new one this week in Nexstar, which led the charge to kick Jimmy Kimmel off television.
On Wednesday night, after Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled from ABC indefinitely for the host’s comments about the assassinated conservative broadcaster Charlie Kirk, reports emerged that Nexstar had decided to cut the show from the 32 ABC stations it owns. With the pressure on from Nexstar — and potential retribution coming from President Trump’s FCC — ABC then decided to cut Kimmel’s late-night show entirely.
The comment in question came on Monday night, when Kimmel said that the “MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” Only “in between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” he added. In a statement, Nexstar’s president of broadcasting wrote that Kimmel’s comments were “offensive and insensitive” and do not reflect the “values of the local communities in which we are located.”
As criticism mounts over the decision to bend to President Trump’s campaign to silence voices critical of Kirk and his administration at large, people are looking at the political motivations of the largest owner of individual news stations in the country Past campaign contributions show a general rightward lean for the company, whose affiliated donors gave just under $125,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2024. But the primary motivation for any support of Trump’s push to silence critics may emerge from Nexstar’s business model itself.
Acquisition has been the entire game for Nexstar since the company bought its first TV station in the late 1990s. Since then, it has expanded to over 200 local stations across the country. It owns Newsnation, the other-other cable news channel that has recently been outperforming CNN and MSNBC in Saturday primetime ratings. It owns CW, which broadcasts NASCAR, college football, and shows like “Totally Funny Animals.” It owns the news media aggregator The Hill, which may require some “full disclosure”
segments as its writers cover the fallout over its parent company’s actions.
Nexstar makes a lot of money through owning all this stuff, reporting $1.23 billion in net revenue in the second quarter. But they want to own more. In August, they announced the $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, a rival company that owns 64 additional TV stations, as well as the True Crime Network. In interviews dating back to Trump’s election, CEO Perry Sook has stated his intention to “move with a sense of urgency” to take advantage of a friendly climate for mergers under the Federal Communications Commission led by commissioner Brendan Carr. Hours before Kimmel’s suspension was made public, Carr said that Kimmel’s comments were “truly sick” and that there was a “strong case” for the FCC to act against ABC’s parent company Disney.
Announcing the Tegna deal in August, Sook praised the Trump administration for offering “local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the Big Tech and legacy Big Media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources.” If the deal went through, Nexstar would have the firepower to compete, becoming the largest provider of local TV in the country.