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ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Live

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ABC/Disney is pretty liberal and yet apparently felt that letting the show continue was more of a liability than what it was worth. So they abandoned even their normally left leaning principles and made a business decision.
A business decision in part pressed on them by the chairman of the FCC holding a rhetorical match and saying "nice business you've got here, shame if something happened to it."

And ya'll laugh when people said we were getting too close to Russian methods. They have a "capitalist" economy too...in theory. Look up what happened to media over there, and candidates, who dared to get too close to the line criticizing Putin.
 
Rolling Stone reports that ABC didn't think what Kimmel said was wrong, but wasn't worth the heat.


In the hours leading up to the decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel, two sources familiar with the matter say, senior executives at ABC, its owner Disney, and affiliates convened emergency meetings to figure out how to minimize the damage. Multiple execs felt that Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line, the two sources say, but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed.

This is exactly what the first amendment is supposed to prevent.

Can you imagine Biden doing something like this to Fox after the Dominion lawsuit? Having his FCC say it disqualifies them to own broadcasting?
 
Rolling Stone reports that ABC didn't think what Kimmel said was wrong, but wasn't worth the heat.




This is exactly what the first amendment is supposed to prevent.

Can you imagine Biden doing something like this to Fox after the Dominion lawsuit? Having his FCC say it disqualifies them to own broadcasting?
What’s to stop the next Dem president from doing it. Presided has been set.
 
Tonight, Wednesday September 17, while ABC ran a rerun of Celebrity Family Feud at 11:35PM, In Boston, WCVB Channel 5 carried an extended newscast followed by a rerun of its local news magazine show Chronicle, thus not carrying the ABC feed.
I have YouTube TV. The channel listing last night for the local ABC affiliate showed Celebrity Family Feud, but tonight's listing shows Kimmel and tonight's guests. I assume this will be changed sometime today. I automatically record the show every night -- not for the monologue but for the frequent country/Americana musical guests Jimmy features -- and just checked out the show from the 16th that triggered Trump's outrage. The section of the monologue that has apparently ended Kimmel's show was nowhere to be found.
 
KMBC is airing Family Feud
I should clarify that WCVB aired an extended newscast in the first half of the Kimmel time slot followed by Chronicle, preempting ABC's programming. At this juncture it's unclear what their long-term strategy in the time period will be. Nightline, by the way, completely sidestepped the issue by airing a 20th anniversary puff piece about The Twilight Saga.
 
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Tonight, Wednesday September 17, while ABC ran a rerun of Celebrity Family Feud at 11:35PM, In Boston, WCVB Channel 5 carried an extended newscast followed by a rerun of its local news magazine show Chronicle, thus not carrying the ABC feed.
Shades of when Hearst ABC affiliates preempted the network airing of "Saving Private Ryan" in 2004 because of concerns over potential FCC fines because of profanity. They aired the film "Far and Away" in its place. No such concerns about Celebrity Family Feud, of course, which makes one wonder what Hearst's motives are here. Was this a silent protest over ABC's suspension of Kimmel, or grabbing some more local ad revenue for itself? Hearst didn't do a blanket preemption of Celebrity Family Feud, it should be noted; in Portland, Maine, for example, WMTW aired Celebrity Family Feud as supplied by ABC.
 
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After Kimmel’s suspension was announced, The Onion’s Ben Collins wrote, “It's becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment."

Collins is absolutely correct about the result of hyperconsolidation, and some of us in this forum have been hammering at the negative consequences of this for a long time. Collins goes on to call it a market opportunity. It's unclear if he'll take up the challenge, but one thing is clear: All corporate-owned media in the U.S. is bending the knee to the authoritarian regime, and it can no longer dependably serve over half the country's population.

While shifts were already underway in the way Americans consume media, I believe what we're seeing now will turn out to be the catalyst for an as-yet unknown new media model to fill the vacuum.
What's old is new again. Students of broadcasting history know that local affiliates once had a great deal of latitude in preempting network programming over content concerns or for purely business reasons. Over time the networks increasingly asserted their dominance in the relationship, demanding that affiliates clear substantially all network programming and extracting a significant percentage of retransmission revenues. Consolidation gives station groups more leverage in negotiations with distributors of their programming as well as the networks. Single station operators like Berkshire Hathaway, despite Warren Bufett's billions, have no such leverage as we've seen recently with the ABC affiliation change in Miami.
 
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i know this thread's getting locked for personal politics sooner or later, so i guess i'll say my comments now, but i'll keep this non-personal

this sucks cause what's happening isn't punishing someone for saying something that ticks people off, this is straight up political retaliation in a country slowly turning into what we been fighting against for decades to centuries, and that is becoming a broken dictatorship 3rd world nation where no one expect those in power have a voice and if you speak up against the regime, you're as good as dead or imprisoned and being forced to be enslaved to do the grunt work that immigrants now no longer will do once all immigrants (legal or not) are deported.

if i'm Jimmy Kimmel, even if ABC ends the suspension, i would not ever come back, i would tell them "you betrayed me, threw me under the bus and betrayed my trust, i quit, i'm suing you for breach of contract and the Trump Administration, Nexstar, Sinclair and the FCC for interfering in my contract".

sadly, i think Jimmy is now "Pre-fired" from ABC/Disney and just waiting on the decision from Disney to fire him before he moves on to a podcast where he and Guillermo Rodriguez (his sidekick and former security guard for the show) host and chat with people.
 
What ABC should have done is spent money and had just big name guests on Kimmel (Taylor Swift, world leaders, ect.) so that viewers get mad at the affiliates for not showing it, or make the broadcasts history making in some way. Or add some primetime hours of Kimmel that would be noticeable if they didn't air...they'd have to think outside the box.
 
When you say something that has amply been proven wrong on national television as the premise for an opinion or comment, there is no exemption for lying.

Your comment fits nicely in the radical opinions that the killing of opposing voices is somehow permissible. Several national surveys have shown a significant number of Americans who find that incidents like the murder of the United Health Care CEO is justifiable as a "sentence" for his "crimes" in putting conditions on insurance payments.

The accused murderer of Kirk seems to have texted his partner saying that his action was justified and had to be done. The text is on nearly every news site in the world.

I know that when I was consultant to the VOA's Radio Martí program, that service had a policy of censure and dismissal for knowingly distorting or changing news items to further an agenda.

I've done more than two dozen all news and news-talk stations, half in the US and half in countries like Argentina, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador. Anyone doing a talk show that lied about known facts would be immediately suspended, and then judged by a team of managers to see if dismissal was warranted. In the meantime, the station would have run an apology or clarification across at least the next 24 hours.

Yes because nothing says neutral like the government anti communist radio pet project of a right wing exile demographic
 
if i'm Jimmy Kimmel, even if ABC ends the suspension, i would not ever come back, i would tell them "you betrayed me, threw me under the bus and betrayed my trust, i quit, i'm suing you for breach of contract and the Trump Administration, Nexstar, Sinclair and the FCC for interfering in my contract".

sadly, i think Jimmy is now "Pre-fired" from ABC/Disney and just waiting on the decision from Disney to fire him before he moves on to a podcast where he and Guillermo Rodriguez (his sidekick and former security guard for the show) host and chat with people.
If I were a betting man, I'd be placing all my money on Kimmel's contract being bought out by Friday afternoon at the latest. The irony is that Kimmel would have a very successful career as a YouTuber and the current format of his show is actually hindering him in the long run.
 
Sadly it looks like it's not preventing that stuff.
Prevention requires a functional government with the checks and balances as originally designed. What we have is nothing of the sort. Six ideologues on SCOTUS have effectively given the executive branch unchecked power to do anything, free of consequence. Congress has become a rubber stamp. We have only the rights dear leader says. (And lest it get lost in this, he said, out loud, he doubts the first amendment rights of protestors.)
 
If I were a betting man, I'd be placing all my money on Kimmel's contract being bought out by Friday afternoon at the latest. The irony is that Kimmel would have a very successful career as a YouTuber and the current format of his show is actually hindering him in the long run.
The sad part is the sole focus is on Kimmel, while idozens of staffers just lost their incomes (or a portion thereof) over a completely innocuous statement.
 
Here's the key quote from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's appearance on the Benny Johnson podcast:

"There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.'"

Not under any known cause for fines or license revocation, they're not.


This is the FCC Chair straight-up saying that if a broadcaster says something the government---strike that---the man in the White House and his party---don't like, fines and license revocation are on the table.
 
What ABC should have done is spent money and had just big name guests on Kimmel (Taylor Swift, world leaders, ect.) so that viewers get mad at the affiliates for not showing it, or make the broadcasts history making in some way. Or add some primetime hours of Kimmel that would be noticeable if they didn't air...they'd have to think outside the box.

Nice idea, but expensive. If ABC got a roster of high profile talent, their appearance fee’s wouldn’t justify the cost.
 
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