• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Live

Status
Not open for further replies.
So let me see if I've got this right? Before Kimmel's show got suspended, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission went on a podcast hosted by a guy who apparently spread Russian propaganda and misinformation before getting fired for plagiarism to talk about "responsible broadcasting"?

Yeah...that makes perfect sense. :unsure:
 
tall_guy1 said:
I don't get why they caved. They could have just aired the show without Nextar/Sinclair and maybe put the episode up live for free on Hulu without a subscription needed for the other markets.
Click to expand...
They didn't even need to go that far. The monologue is up on Youtube each evening, either just before or just after the East Coast feed of the program. The remainder appears, again on Youtube, sometime overnight after its West Coast airing. If you can get used to YT's "sandbagging" approach to inserting commercials, it's all there for free.
 
thedesk.net

Broadcasters who criticized Jimmy Kimmel have deals pending before FCC

Nexstar wants to merge with TEGNA, and Sinclair is in the process of buying and selling TV stations — all of which require approval from the FCC.
thedesk.net thedesk.net

thedesk.net

House lawmakers want FCC chairman to testify on Kimmel remarks

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives' House Oversight Committee are working toward a plan that would compel testimony from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
thedesk.net thedesk.net

thedesk.net

Sinclair wants Jimmy Kimmel to donate to Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA

Sinclair said it wants Jimmy Kimmel to apologize for a monologue he delivered on Monday and has demanded high-level talks with ABC executives before it returns his show to their affiliates.
thedesk.net thedesk.net

thedesk.net

ABC pulls "Jimmy Kimmel Live" amid threats from FCC chairman

September 17, 2025 - Broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair raised public objections on Wednesday to Kimmel's monologue that aired on their ABC-affiliated stations two days earlier.
thedesk.net thedesk.net

Here is the roundup on all of the fallout surrounding Jimmy Kimmel.
 
Mark Roberts said:
@CTListener: "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."
Click to expand...
Mark Roberts said:
I added the emphasis. If this was deliberate, and not just some technical glitch, then we're in full-blown Nineteen-Eighty-Four memory-hole territory here.
Click to expand...
A dozen others might have mentioned this in the subsequent pages I haven't gotten to reading yet -- if so, apologies -- but the Kimmel's comments were made in the MONDAY, SEPT 15th monologue. @CTListener referenced the TUESDAY, SEPT 16th show, which of course wouldn't have them. In fact, the controversy was ginned up by Carr and Nexstar only yesterday, 9/17, so he wouldn't even have known they were controversial on Tuesday.

This entire thing smells like burnt sulfur (i.e. rotten eggs).
 
tall_guy1 said:
But what I'm getting at is how? Not sure they have any jurisdiction to take a station off the air because of one comment by one comedian on the network.
Click to expand...
By threats. He was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. He threatened FCC action. And what the law says (a) is of no consequence to this administration and (b) is only meaningful if the courts and Congress act as checks and balances. The government has unlimited taxpayer funded resources to extort whoever they want. The subjects of the extortion have no such luxury.
 
TheBigA said:
Time Warp said:
Lying on a broadcast station is called a hoax.
Click to expand...
Who said it was a lie? Who is the arbiter of truth?
Click to expand...
I'm reminded of the 2003 documentary film The Corporation, which featured a segment on how a Florida appeals court had affirmed that TV stations falsifying news isn't against the law. It centered on two local news reporters who were suing their former Fox affiliate employer over being ordered to sabotage a story about a Monsanto product causing cancers in humans.


The relevant portion is 01:29:45 to 01:40:43.
 
davideduardo said:
All those network contracts have clauses about everything from off-air behaviour and remarks to content on the air. And most send any disputes to arbitration. In this case, if what Kimmel said was provably wrong at the moment he said it, then the contract's suspension or cancellation clauses would likely hold up in arbitration.

The network and the affiliate station owners are, ultimately, those who make the decisions, not the talent. There is no "freedom of speech" on a privately owned TV web or its affiliates.
Click to expand...
For example, when Joan Rivers had become too much of a headache for Fox they simply waited until the next time she called in sick, and then exercised a clause from the boilerplate of her contract that gave them the right to insist that she see a doctor chosen by them. When she blew that off they used it as grounds to fire her.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
For example, when Joan Rivers had become too much of a headache for Fox they simply waited until the next time she called in sick, and then exercised a clause from the boilerplate of her contract that gave them the right to insist that she see a doctor chosen by them. When she blew that off they used it as grounds to fire her.
Click to expand...

Jimmy Kimmel and ABC are in the 24th year of their relationship. I promise you his contract makes hers look like a drunken "We'll respect you in the morning" at 2:00 a.m.
 
tall_guy1 said:
Nextstar caved, but Abc didn't have to. Just reduce the show length to reduce the cost temporarily.
Click to expand...
No, the way to handle this is for Disney to declare Nexstar, Tegna, Sinclair in breach of contract, and turn off their network affiliation instantly, across the board. Disable their satellite downlink converters. No GMA, no ABC news, no Bachelor/Bachelorette, no Abbot Elementary, no any ABC Primetime, no ABC/ESPN sports, no newscast actualities, zilch. Leave them 100% in the lurch.

Which outfit do you think has more resources to ride out this kind of hit? Disney? Or Nexstar, Tegna or Sinclair? Anybody think it's not Disney? The station owners all of a sudden lose a ton of their weekly programming and have to hustle to get replacement programs on the air. Disney still has a big chunk of their affiliates, and if they offer the network shows temporarily to displaced viewers in the other affected markets via streaming, they'll come off as the good guys. In the meantime, ABC can shop the affiliations around to independent stations in those same markets, and they'll probably find wiling takers, while Nexstar/Tegna/Sinclair all become instantly-less-valuable indies to advertisers and Wall Street.

And one more thing to keep in mind: Nexstar and Sinclair both need financing to complete their acquisitions, and all the financial assumptions are predicated on current network-affiliates market value, assets, liabilities and cash flow, which would take an instant hit. And Tegna needs to be acquired, and is banking on that deal completing.

Chairman Carr can't dictate what Wall Street does with its money. You've got to fight fire with fire.
 
Weiserguy said:
No, the way to handle this is for Disney to declare Nexstar, Tegna, Sinclair in breach of contract, and turn off their network affiliation instantly, across the board. Disable their satellite downlink converters. No GMA, no ABC news, no Bachelor/Bachelorette, no Abbot Elementary, no any ABC Primetime, no ABC/ESPN sports, no newscast actualities, zilch. Leave them 100% in the lurch.

Which outfit do you think has more resources to ride out this kind of hit? Disney? Or Nexstar, Tegna or Sinclair? Anybody think it's not Disney? The station owners all of a sudden lose a ton of their weekly programming and have to hustle to get replacement programs on the air. Disney still has a big chunk of their affiliates, and if they offer the network shows temporarily to displaced viewers in the other affected markets via streaming, they'll come off as the good guys. In the meantime, ABC can shop the affiliations around to independent stations in those same markets, and they'll probably find wiling takers, while Nexstar/Tegna/Sinclair all become instantly-less-valuable indies to advertisers and Wall Street.

And one more thing to keep in mind: Nexstar and Sinclair both need financing to complete their acquisitions, and all the financial assumptions are predicated on current network-affiliates market value, assets, liabilities and cash flow, which would take an instant hit. And Tegna needs to be acquired, and is banking on that deal completing.

Chairman Carr can't dictate what Wall Street does with its money. You've got to fight fire with fire.
Click to expand...

You left out what they do in the shitstorm that follows with the Trump administration, but this is what I mean by "we'll see if the Mouse grows balls."
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom