ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel Live after comments on Charlie Kirk

[Tuur]

Good point. However, the government was clearly demanding that he be removed. Disney/ABC would not have fired him were it not for pressure from the FTC Chair.


Kimmel’s suspension was announced hours after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized the comedian and implied that the FCC could retaliate against those who aired him.


...and then there's this: [Nexstar owns ABC stations in 30 markets]


Notably, Nexstar is seeking the Trump administration’s approval to acquire Tegna, another big group of U.S. stations. The deal requires the FCC to loosen the government’s limits on broadcast station ownership.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/09/18/jimmy-kimmel-suspension-celebrities-react/

The FCC attempting to shut it down would end up in court in a heartbeat and lose. That's not an issue. Your cite has the implication that this is an issue without evidence that it is.

Meanwhile, we do know affiliates pre-empting the show is an issue. In looking for a statement by Sinclair, the other big affiliate player involved, who intends to run a tribute to Kirk one night in that slot, I found this:

Nexstar Denies Jimmy Kimmel Suspension Was Due to FCC Pressure

Sinclair has also stated the FCC had no role in pre-empting the show.

The ironic thing? When Fox removed Tucker Carlson for similar reasons. Kimmel celebrated on-air with crude comments.

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

Since Kirk's wanted to release the

Liberal commentators will be allowed to voice their opinions and continue to bury their party.

They won't bury their party. We're are just preparing ourselves . In hopes we can survive . nightmare. That has been pushed on us.

 

[RDKirk]

You guys are celebrating having canceled a show no one was even watching?

You might be amazed at how many people have heard of Charlie Kirk only within the past week.

 

[RDKirk]

Of course I've heard the clip. Why else would I be talking about it? If you can't figure it out, what he was saying was if there were no such thing as affirmative action, I would not wonder about a black pilot. But because of affirmative action, it can be legitimate to have a concern.

It's cued up:

I'm not impressed that he didn't know or deliberately blurred the difference between Affirmative Action and DEI.

But inasmuch as he also considered the Civil Rights Act to be a mistake, I wouldn't have invited him to my barbeque.

I was here before the Civil Rights Act...I remember life before the Civil Rights Act.

 

[Chesterton]

I'm not impressed that he didn't know or deliberately blurred the difference between Affirmative Action and DEI.

There's a little difference in approach, but substantially no difference.

But inasmuch as he also considered the Civil Rights Act to be a mistake, I wouldn't have invited him to my barbeque.

I was here before the Civil Rights Act...I remember life before the Civil Rights Act.

You're free to invite or not invite anyone you want to your barbeque.

 

[RileyG]

It’s not a “news show”.

Are people not allowed to react and/or not like something someone says?

 

[Bradskii]

Of course I've heard the clip. Why else would I be talking about it? If you can't figure it out, what he was saying was if there were no such thing as affirmative action, I would not wonder about a black pilot. But because of affirmative action, it can be legitimate to have a concern.

He was implying that a black pilot might have got that position not because of his ability to fly a plane but simply because he was black.

Now I don't know whether he actually believed that, in which case I think we can say that he was stupid. Or that he didn't know any better, in which case he should educate himself before talking on such matters. Or that he knew exactly what the situation was but wanted to blow that dog whistle anyway. In which case I'd say that he was not stupid or ill informed but contemptible.

 

[Chesterton]

He was implying that a black pilot might have got that position not because of his ability to fly a plane but simply because he was black.

Now I don't know whether he actually believed that, in which case I think we can say that he was stupid. Or that he didn't know any better, in which case he should educate himself before talking on such matters. Or that he knew exactly what the situation was but wanted to blow that dog whistle anyway. In which case I'd say that he was not stupid or ill informed but contemptible.

Did you listen to the video clip I linked in that post?

 

[Tuur]

See post #104. The issue isn't that ABC chose to cancel his show after what he said. The issue is that ABC chose to cancel his show after the chairman of the FCC threatened them with legal action if they didn't.

How would you feel about the chairman of the FCC under Biden threatening Fox with fines and suspension of their broadcast license if they didn't fire their commentators who perpetuated the lies about the 2020 election?

First, ABC suspended Kimmel (it hasn't canceled the show) after affiliates did cancel the show by pre-empting it.

Second, I don't recall many rallying around Carlson when Fox canned him for similar reasons.

Third, "How would you feel" is irrelevant. Feelings change with mood, and that is subject to change with the most trivial things, or with nothing at all. What we think is hopefully well grounded in reason.

Fourth, see the first point. This is being portrayed as an action by the FCC, but the affiliates who pre-empted Kimmel says it's not. This is on par with canning Rosanne Barr, Gilbert Gottfried, and many others for what they said. Where was the outrage then?

 

[Bradskii]

Did you listen to the video clip I linked in that post?

I'm aware of the full context of what he originally said. I've read the whole conversation. The video clip was him trying to double down on that. Effectively saying that an airline would employ a less qualified person, a less able pilot purely on the basis of their colour.

That is abject nonsense and we all know that.

What DEI does in this case is to give more people the opportunity to qualify. It increases the number of people who try to become pilots. And basic common sense will tell you that that will raise standards. Any given airline is going to take the best of any given group.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

What's particularly frustrating about this one, is that Trump's FCC guy should've (in the words of Martin Crane from Frasier) "kept his big bazoo shut"

From some other coverage I've seen/heard, it sounds like the free market (at least to a degree) was already on the road to solving the problem organically.

That was in the form of "affiliate backlash"...

This may be a more long-winded explanation than some care to know (and I only know some of it due to the fact that a Dayton affiliate for one of the networks used to be a client of ours)

So if someone wants to start their own NBC affiliate for their city, they're entering into a "give & take" contractual agreement.

We'll go with NBC just as an example...
What NBC gets: Affiliates agrees to carry the Primetime line-ups, "marquee shows" and national ad spots (which is where NBC gets their revenue, and the local affiliate gets a small cut of the national ad revenue)

What the affiliate gets: The ability to pick out a schedule and air other shows for which the parent network has the rights for (or syndicated rights that they purchase). And during those time windows, they can carry self-procured ads that they can drum up for themselves, and for that, they get all of the ad revenue. (ad revenue during local news is typically a hot time)


I say all that to say...

While someone who owned an ABC affiliate station out on the west coast may have not been terribly worried about a loss of station viewership over Kimmel's comments, if you were an ABC affiliate station owner somewhere in the south where political attitudes are different, people deciding to never watch your channel again over that was a very real concern.


In this case, the initial backlash was coming from Nextstar, a media group out of Texas that owns ABC affiliates in the following markets, was already stating they were going to preempt his show.

Station​	Market / City​
WJBF​	Augusta, Georgia​
WJET-TV​	Erie, Pennsylvania​
WEHT​	Evansville, Indiana​
WOTV​	Battle Creek / Kalamazoo / Grand Rapids, Michigan​
WLAJ​	Lansing–Jackson, Michigan​
WTNH​	New Haven–Hartford, Connecticut​
WGNO​	New Orleans, Louisiana​
WHTM-TV​	Harrisburg–Lancaster-York-Lebanon, Pennsylvania​
KMID​	Midland–Odessa, Texas​
KAMC​	Abilene-Sweetwater, Texas​
Knoxville’s WATE-TV​	Knoxville, Tennessee​
WKRN-TV​	Nashville, Tennessee​
KSVI​	Billings, Montana​

With the exception of the Connecticut affiliate (not sure if New Haven is a red or blue area...not familiar with the area), those are all southern & midwestern markets. You can understand how they saw the "Charlie Kirk was killed by one of Maga's own" probably sent off some alarm bells there, and real concerns about people deciding to turn ABC off and never turn it on again.


...but like I said, that boneheaded move by the FCC guy now muddies the waters, now they've introduced the "this is government coercion" aspect when it likely would've worked itself out naturally.


And that seems to be an opinion that's even shared by some on the right side of the fence. Ben Shapiro went on something of a mini-tirade about it today, about how stupid it was for the FCC chair to do this.

(don't worry, I queued it right up to the spot where he discusses that aspect, since I know people don't want to sit through a whole hour episode of Shapiro)

 

[Chesterton]

I'm aware of the full context of what he originally said. I've read the whole conversation. The video clip was him trying to double down on that. Effectively saying that an airline would employ a less qualified person, a less able pilot purely on the basis of their colour.

That is abject nonsense and we all know that.

What DEI does in this case is to give more people the opportunity to qualify. It increases the number of people who try to become pilots. And basic common sense will tell you that that will raise standards. Any given airline is going to take the best of any given group.

Basic common sense will tell you that if someone wants to be a pilot, and has what it takes, there's no need for DEI.

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

They were probably just using it as an excuse to dump the show. Which probably like Colbert's show wasn't making enough money. It's been around since 2003 which is 22 years, so time to pull the plug. It's literally older than the assassin.

Then they should have told the truth. Because now the crazies are happy about this. Even though they didn't see the part, that Trump cares more about a ball room, than Kirk. Also Trump has nothing to loose from Kirk's death. Since Kirk wanted the Epstein client list and stuff released. And Trump doesn't.

 

[JSRG]

See post #104. The issue isn't that ABC chose to cancel his show after what he said. The issue is that ABC chose to cancel his show after the chairman of the FCC threatened them with legal action if they didn't.

How would you feel about the chairman of the FCC under Biden threatening Fox with fines and suspension of their broadcast license if they didn't fire their commentators who perpetuated the lies about the 2020 election?

While the indefinite suspension was announced after Brendan Carr's threat, it happened so quickly afterwards I don't think ABC's announcement was a reaction to it. And Carr's statements were given on a podcast, not as part of an actual public announcement that would have gotten ABC's attention more quickly. And even if they were worried about his comments, there wasn't an immediacy to them that required them to take action mere hours afterwards.

Much more plausibly, the reason was the affiliates saying they wouldn't air Kimmel's show. That requires a more immediate response to deal with than Carr's statements, and (as far as I can tell) ABC would have fewer legal avenues to fight the issue with. I also strongly suspect that they were experiencing problems with advertisers pulling out of the show due to the controversy, again an issue they would have to deal with far more immediately than anything from the FCC. I feel like at most Carr's statements just accelerated what ABC was already considering or even already planned to do.

I should note, however, this was not a cancellation, but an indefinite suspension. That phrase can lead to a cancellation, but by itself simply means something is on pause for an undetermined length of time. Things put on indefinite suspension or indefinite hiatus can come back. ABC most likely is trying to figure out if there's a way they can fix the situation to appease the affiliates and advertisers, and if so the series could come back (contrariwise, if they can't appease them, then the show could indeed become cancelled), but in the meantime they needed to fix those issues right away so they just suspended the series in the meantime.

 

[Chesterton]

While the indefinite suspension was announced after Brendan Carr's threat, it happened so quickly afterwards I don't think ABC's announcement was a reaction to it. And Carr's statements were given on a podcast, not as part of an actual public announcement that would have gotten ABC's attention more quickly. And even if they were worried about his comments, there wasn't an immediacy to them that required them to take action mere hours afterwards.

Much more plausibly, the reason was the affiliates saying they wouldn't air Kimmel's show. That requires a more immediate response to deal with than Carr's statements, and (as far as I can tell) ABC would have fewer legal avenues to fight the issue with. I also strongly suspect that they were experiencing problems with advertisers pulling out of the show due to the controversy, again an issue they would have to deal with far more immediately than anything from the FCC. I feel like at most Carr's statements just accelerated what ABC was already considering or even already planned to do.

I should note, however, this was not a cancellation, but an indefinite suspension. That phrase can lead to a cancellation, but by itself simply means something is on pause for an undetermined length of time. Things put on indefinite suspension or indefinite hiatus can come back. ABC most likely is trying to figure out if there's a way they can fix the situation to appease the affiliates and advertisers, and if so the series could come back (contrariwise, if they can't appease them, then the show could indeed become cancelled), but in the meantime they needed to fix those issues right away so they just suspended the series in the meantime.

Agreed. This wasn't "cancel culture" in action. There was no huge outcry from conservatives demanding it. This was just a guy getting fired. But to Kimmel's credit, him getting himself fired is the first funny thing he's ever done.

 

[Servus]

Then they should have told the truth. Because now the crazies are happy about this. Even though they didn't see the part, that Trump cares more about a ball room, than Kirk. Also Trump has nothing to loose from Kirk's death. Since Kirk wanted the Epstein client list and stuff released. And Trump doesn't.

That's straight out of that garbage Kimmel spewed. I didn't say they lied. I said they used used it as an excuse to dump a failing show.

 

[Belk]

Basic common sense will tell you that if someone wants to be a pilot, and has what it takes, there's no need for DEI.

Basic common sense told us:

The earth is flat
The sun moves not the planet
Women are inferior to men
Blacks are not as sophisticated as whites

which is why up until recently "common sense" was a term of derision used to note the ideas of the uneducated. Because "common sense" is very often wrong.

 

[Chesterton]

Basic common sense told us:

The earth is flat
The sun moves not the planet
Women are inferior to men
Blacks are not as sophisticated as whites

which is why up until recently "common sense" was a term of derision used to note the ideas of the uneducated. Because "common sense" is very often wrong.

I used the words "common sense" because the person I was disagreeing with used those same words, so which one of us is wrong?

 

[Belk]

I used the words "common sense" because the person I was disagreeing with used those same words, so which one of us is wrong?

I'm guessing both.

 

[Bradskii]

Basic common sense will tell you that if someone wants to be a pilot, and has what it takes, there's no need for DEI.

In which case then white guys are obviously better flyers than women or Asians or blacks because they are over represented. Which is quite frankly...nonsense. There are obviously reasons why women, Asians, Latinos, Blacks etc aren't taking flying lessons in the first place.

Here's a pilot talking about DEI in the airline industry: Airline Pilots & DEI: A Reality Check, As Unbiased As Possible

'...there’s United Aviate, which is a pilot career development academy. This is an academy that trains people with no flying experience to become airline pilots. It in no way lowers the requirements to get your certifications and become a pilot, and it also doesn’t guarantee you a job at the airline. Furthermore, this is only one of many pathways to becoming an airline pilot, as there are endless other ways to do so as well.

Yes, United Aviate uses DEI, and promotes how it hopes to have a certain percentage of minority cadets, who historically might not have had the opportunity to become pilots.

Now, some people will argue that “I want the best pilots, regardless of the color of their skin.” I hear you, and I completely agree. What that misses is that these academies aren’t hiring pilots, they’re accepting people who want to train to become pilots.

This is of course where we can get into a discussion about DEI, but I don’t think it’s relevant to the core of peoples’ concerns about the impact of DEI on the existing safety infrastructure in the industry.

The reason it’s not relevant is because these people still have to complete all certifications (with the highest requirements in the world) before they’re actually in the cockpit of an airliner. If we get to the point where white guys with 5,000 flight hours aren’t landing jobs at airlines while others are landing jobs with 1,500 flight hours, then I’ll be right there with you, in expressing my concerns, and calling that out. But it just doesn’t reflect the current reality.'

All that strikes me as blindingly obvious. And it's equally obvious that not everyone who can afford the cost of the lessons, medicals, number of hours, training, exams etc is going to be the next Chuck Yeager. But...there may well be an excellent flyer who gets the opportunity to train in academies like that provided by United Aviate.

But Kirk wanted to blow that dog whistle and imply that the guy with stripes on his arm sitting up the front of your red eye to L.A. might have got that position based on his colour. And I'm absolutely certain that he knew it wasn't the case. He really wasn't that stupid. Which leads to only one conclusion...