NEW UPDATE- Jimmy Kimmel Live back on all ABC stations

[opus]

No politics, but the death of free speech continues.


https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/media...c-brendan-carr

[TMC]

Nexstar wants FCC approval of its $6.2 billion merger with rival Tegna. Either FCC Chief Brendan Carr pressured them to preempt Kimmel on their stations or they did it proactively to curry favor.

[Dream Canteen]

This is the opposite of free speech: as with Colbert (in his case, the Paramount/Skydance merger approval), the government put its finger on the scale to get the show canceled and the show was canceled.

Fascism is here, and Sinclair Lewis was right. It’s wrapped in an American flag, holding a Bible.

If Kimmel had, instead of bringing up Charlie Kirk, said that homeless and mentally ill people should be euthanized, he’d still have a job.

[icecream]

Replacing Jimmy Kimmel at 11:35 tonight is a Celebrity Family Feud repeat. Other nights have not been updated yet.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by opus

No politics

Yes that was one G00D thing about it!!

Too many things are centered about blasted politics and it sucks!!

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Dream Canteen

This is the opposite of free speech: as with Colbert (in his case, the Paramount/Skydance merger approval), the government put its finger on the scale to get the show canceled and the show was canceled.

Fascism is here, and Sinclair Lewis was right. It’s wrapped in an American flag, holding a Bible.

If Kimmel had, instead of bringing up Charlie Kirk, said that homeless and mentally ill people should be euthanized, he’d still have a job.

Speaking of which:

Maryland - September 17, 2025 - Sinclair, the nation's largest ABC affiliate group, objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

As discussed with ABC earlier today, Sinclair decided to indefinitely preempt "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" beginning tonight. Following these discussions, ABC has suspended production of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

"Mr. Kimmel's remarks were inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country," said Vice Chairman Jason Smith. "We believe broadcasters have a responsibility to educate and elevate respectful, constructive dialogue in our communities. We appreciate FCC Chairman Carr's remarks today and this incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks."

Sinclair's ABC stations will air a special in remembrance of Charlie Kirk this Friday, during Jimmy Kimmel Live's timeslot.

The special will also air across all Sinclair stations this weekend. In addition, Sinclair is offering the special to all ABC affiliates across the country.

Sinclair will not lift the suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability.

Sinclair also calls upon Mr. Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family. Furthermore, we ask Mr. Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.

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.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

Nexstar wants FCC approval of its $6.2 billion merger with rival Tegna. Either FCC Chief Brendan Carr pressured them to preempt Kimmel on their stations or they did it proactively to curry favor.

Basically, Nexstar "pulled the show" (depending on one's interpretation of events) because they are begging for Brendon Carr to remove all ownership caps so they can get Tegna outright.

[Bonniegirl]

I can't believe it. It's crazy !!

[stevea]

Originally Posted by TMC

Nexstar wants FCC approval of its $6.2 billion merger with rival Tegna. Either FCC Chief Brendan Carr pressured them to preempt Kimmel on their stations or they did it proactively to curry favor.

Sinclair, the largest ABC affiliate group, also pulled the show. The Nexstar and Sinclair stations together forced ABC's hand.

https://katv.com/news/local/sinclair...etwork-address

[stevea]

Tonight will be another Celebrity Family Feud.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...144653862.html

On Friday night a Sinclair-produced special on Charlie Kirk will be offered to all ABC affiliates.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/09...eslot-1586030/

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Bonniegirl

I can't believe it. It's crazy !!

I believe it..... Things have gone to crap and getting worse everyday!

[TJ]

This kind of stuff happens in Russia and China. I never thought we would see it here.

It will be interesting to see if ABC stands up for him. I think he'll be back by September 29 for a week of shows in Brooklyn.

https://creators.yahoo.com/lifestyle...174253584.html

[TMC]

ABC threw Jimmy Kimmel under the bus after decades of loyalty

By Daniel D'Addario

On Wednesday morning, hours before Jimmy Kimmel would go on to be pulled from ABC indefinitely after incurring the ire of the FCC, the New York Times’ arts desk tweeted their “Best of Late Night” morning roundup. The joke they highlighted? Jimmy Fallon’s quip on NBC about Donald Trump’s trip to the United Kingdom, in which Fallon said that Trump would need to return home by midnight, or else his carriage (or, confusingly, Trump himself?) might turn back into a pumpkin.

That, perhaps, is the only kind of political humor that is still safe: Gesturing toward a punchline while risking nothing, saying nothing. It’s not hard to notice that, much like the carriage-riding Trump of his joke, Fallon is a Cinderella figure these days. In Trump’s first term, his position among his peers slipped as Fallon was less willing or able to be political than Kimmel or than CBS’ Stephen Colbert. Colbert is now a lame duck, with his entire franchise ending next spring; Kimmel may or may not return to air, but, if he does, he will have had his comic wings clipped after having had the full force of the federal government’s power trained on him.

In a Monday monologue, Kimmel spoke about the assassination of conservative speaker Charlie Kirk, addressing Trump supporters’ characterization of accused killer Tyler Robinson’s politics and mocking the president’s ordering American flags to half-mast. As to the suspect’s political beliefs: The case is dynamic and still unfolding, and confidently expressing a perspective might have been imprudent.

But imprudence is not a crime. Imprudence, in fact, can be the wellspring of great comedy — at least in a society where we understand free speech to be a foundational right and a virtue. So much for that! Disney’s pulling Kimmel on Wednesday came after FCC chair Brendan Carr said that the commission could potentially revoke ABC’s affiliate licenses, preventing the network from broadcasting entirely. Affiliate groups announced they were pulling the show before the entire network followed suit.

It’s worth noting this was not just a rank-and-file Disney employee who got kicked to the curb. Kimmel is the face of the network — a repeat host of the Oscars and Emmys on ABC’s air, and who the network brings in like clockwork at their upfront presentation to roast its own programming. His “getting political,” too, drew his show widespread plaudits when, in Trump’s first term, Kimmel used his pulpit to speak about healthcare in America after his newborn son was found to have a congenital heart ailment. In other words, Kimmel was a company man, and one whose past attempts to speak out had been met with hearty applause. And even he was not safe.

Not for the first time this year, an atmosphere of threat and of power politics has encroached upon the constitutionally protected tradition of free speech in this country, and taken our country to a place we haven’t been before.

What, then, lies ahead? It feels grimly apparent that Fallon may be the last man standing in the 11:35 p.m. timeslot, placing him in the unpleasant and — even a critic of his can acknowledge — uncomfortable position of at least being perceived as the state-media version of late night. It may just be that the man who was not right for the moment in the #Resistance era of 2017 is just perfect for a time in which attempts to speak out are punished so harshly as to seem not worth the trouble.

That, in the end, is the practical effect of the Trump administration’s approach to cultural politics, or culture-as-politics — Kimmel, like Colbert, is not being thrown in jail for his thought crimes. But he’s being used to make an example that resounds among his entertainment-industry peers and to all of us watching at home: Those who are not in line will be forced to get in line, or to face consequences that make life and earning a livelihood significantly harder. I noted with interest the firing of MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd hours after he shared infelicitously phrased thoughts on Kirk’s rhetorical approach; it called to mind a similar-enough incident, in September 2001, when Bill Maher, then a late-night host on ABC, referred to the Sept. 11 suicide attackers as “not cowardly” by comparison to the American defense apparatus. Amid huge outcry, Maher stayed on his show until it was, eventually but not swiftly, canceled a little less than a year later. The Bush administration’s press secretary Ari Fleischer decried Maher, but it was just that: Meeting his speech with more speech. The brute force of government was not employed to take revenge upon ABC.

That’s because there had been, up to a point very recent in our history, an understanding that the citizen has endless options when confronted with speech he or she does not like: Not to be trite, but changing the channel is one. So is speaking back, by contacting advertisers or writing op-eds or using the opposing argument to clarify his or her own. Now, though — as the result of an election won by less than two percentage points of the popular vote — criticism of the party in power is, effectively, so close to being illegal that it differs in all but name.

What, then, lies ahead for TV? (Beyond the scope of this column is the question of TV news in particular, especially as CBS News and, possibly, CNN may transform under the reported potential leadership of self-styled firebrand Bari Weiss, whose career mission has been to move the media toward a particular set of orthodoxies in which she believes.) It’s hard to imagine CBS and ABC’s late-night airtime being filled by programming with a right-wing perspective — although the red-state-coded host and multiple country-music performances at the recent Emmys telecast raised my eyebrow from a cultural-signaling perspective, explicitly conservative comedy has not worked, to this point, on television.

More likely it just sits idle, a pointed reminder of the not-worthwhile risk a comedian takes when offending the leader. All that will be left is Fallon joking about carriages turning into pumpkins. It’s a joke that may mean more than he could possibly know: Cinderella didn’t know how good she had it for a while there, but stuff to which you become accustomed, like the right to free speech, can vanish just like that when the clock strikes midnight.

David Letterman, who texted with Jimmy Kimmel this morning, says "you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office”

“This is misery,” Letterman, Kimmel's longtime idol, said today at The Atlantic Festival when asked about Jimmy Kimmel Live!'s suspension in New York City, according to Variety. “I feel bad about this,” said Letterman. “We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.” Letterman added: “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.” Letterman also revealed Kimmel texted him this morning. “He’s up in bed, he’s taking nourishment,” Letterman said.

ALSO:

• Barack Obama slams Jimmy Kimmel's ABC suspension: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” the former president, a four-time Jimmy Kimmel Live! guest, wrote on Twitter on Thursday, linking to Yahoo News’ reposting of a Vox article that calls the Kimmel suspension “Trump’s most brazen attack on free speech yet.”
  
• President Trump says Jimmy Kimmel “was fired” due to "lack of talent": "Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk," the president said in a joint press conference in Britain with UK Prime Minister Keir Starner. "And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago; so, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent."
  
• Fox News' Greg Gutfeld rips Jimmy Kimmel: "I hate to tell you buddy, but the guy who shot and killed Charlie Kirk was more likely a fan of yours"
  
• House Democratic leaders blast FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for a “corrupt abuse of power”
  
• Democratic U.S. Rep Eric Swalwell wears a Jimmy Kimmel Live! hat in Congress
  
• Stephen Colbert will likely discuss Jimmy Kimmel's suspension tonight with guests Jake Tapper of CNN and The New Yorker editor David Remnick
  
• Over the summer, Jimmy Kimmel expressed hope that if Trump went after him, "my colleagues on the right will support my right to say what I like": “Well, you’d have to be naive not to worry a little bit. But that can’t change what you’re doing,” Kimmel told Variety's Todd Spangler. “And maybe it is naive, but I have the hope that if and when the day comes that he does start coming after comedians, that even my colleagues on the right will support my right to say what I like. Now, I could be kidding myself, and hopefully we’ll never find out. But if we do, I would hope that the outrage is significant.” As Spangler points out, "now that Trump and his backers have succeeded in forcing Jimmy Kimmel Live! (for now) off the air, the MAGA-verse — supposedly, a group of full-throated supporters of free speech — has reacted with glee, not outrage."
  
• Did Disney have NFL deal in mind when pulling Jimmy Kimmel?

The View was oddly silent about fellow ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live!'s suspension — despite no ban on talking about it

"You know how media figures make fun of Fox News when they ignore a huge story that makes President Trump look bad?" says The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. "Something similar seemed to happen during The View on Thursday, which ignored the biggest media story in the country — Jimmy Kimmel Live! being suspended following the host’s controversial comments about suspected Charlie Kirk. The View panel was dead silent on the blockbuster controversy in their own network’s backyard. The show panel instead devoted their time to riveting topics such as Kash Patel’s congressional hearing and a discussion of RFK Jr." As Hibberd reports, "a source close to the show insists the panel was not forbidden from discussing Kimmel. It’s admittedly possible the panelists opted to self-censor during a period of internal crisis, as it’s difficult to imagine they didn’t find the topic compelling enough to discuss." Hibberd also notes that The View panelists weren't shy about talking about Stephen Colbert's cancelation in July.

Jimmy Fallon abruptly bows out of a New York City conference Thursday amid fallout over Jimmy Kimmel's suspension

“Unfortunately, Jimmy Fallon is no longer able to attend today’s session,” the Fast Company Innovation Festival said in a statement. Fallon and marketing executive Bozoma Saint John had been scheduled to discuss their new advertising-focused NBC series On Brand.

[Charles Knox]

Originally Posted by TJ

This kind of stuff happens in Russia and China. I never thought we would see it here.

It will be interesting to see if ABC stands up for him. I think he'll be back by September 29 for a week of shows in Brooklyn.

https://creators.yahoo.com/lifestyle...174253584.html

In China and Russia, he would be swimming at the bottom of the ocean for what he said.

[icecream]

Originally Posted by stevea

Tonight will be another Celebrity Family Feud.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...144653862.html

On Friday night a Sinclair-produced special on Charlie Kirk will be offered to all ABC affiliates.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/09...eslot-1586030/

Offered but not taken. My affiliate, which isn't with Nexstar or Sinclair, will be airing Celebrity Family Feud again.