ABC sidelined late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over his controversial comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk after Nexstar Media Group said it would preempt Kimmel’s show.
A spokesperson for ABC, which is owned by Disney, said in a statement on Wednesday that “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely,” following an announcement by one of its major broadcasting partners that it would stop airing Kimmel’s show.
Nexstar, the owner of 32 ABC affiliate stations, said Wednesday that it “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s comments and that it would preempt his show “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show.”
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in a statement.
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“Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue,” Alford added.
What is Nexstar?
Nexstar Media Group is the largest local television broadcasting group in the U.S., with more than 200 owned or partner stations that serve 220 million people in 116 U.S. markets.
The company owns 75% of The CW, which is the fifth-largest broadcast network in the U.S. and is available in all U.S. households. Nexstar also owns NewsNation, a TV and digital news outlet, as well as digital political news outlet The Hill and multicast networks Antenna TV, Rewind TV and WGN Radio in Chicago.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NXST | NEXSTAR MEDIA GROUP | 206.40 | +0.48 | +0.23% |
| DIS | THE WALT DISNEY CO. | 114.86 | -1.24 | -1.07% |
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Last month, Nexstar announced a deal to acquire broadcast media company Tegna for $6.2 billion, which Nexstar said will help ensure the viability of local news and programming.
Nexstar noted that its station footprint overlaps with Tegna in 35 of Tegna’s 51 market areas, while also boosting its affiliate network in key election markets like Phoenix, Atlanta, Toledo, Ohio, and Portland, Maine, to increase political advertising revenue.
Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna requires the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
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What did Kimmel say?
“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 doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during his monologue on Monday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Kimmel also criticized President Donald Trump’s response to Kirk’s death, saying it “is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
He also said that FBI Director Kash Patel has handled the Kirk assassination investigation “like a kid who didn’t read the book, BSing his way through an oral report.”
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr praised Nexstar’s move to preempt Kimmel’s show and said that “it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.”
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Prior to the announcement by Nexstar, Sinclair, another broadcasting group with ABC affiliates, opted to preempt Kimmel’s show.
Carr said on podcaster Benny Johnson’s show that Kimmel’s comments were a “very, very serious issue now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He also encouraged licensed stations to say that this sort of content doesn’t serve their local communities.
Carr’s comments prompted criticism from free speech advocates, with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) saying, “The FCC has no authority to control what a late night TV host can say, and the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speculate on current events even if those speculations later turn out to be incorrect.”
“Subjecting broadcasters to regulatory liability when anyone on their network gets something wrong would turn the FCC into an arbiter of truth and cast an intolerable chill over the airwaves,” FIRE added.
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