Immediately after ABC forced “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to sit down while both the Sinclair and Nexstar affiliate groups said they would put the late-night show on indefinite hiatus, Kimmel thought the show was over with for good.
He came to this dark conclusion after Sinclair shared their list of demands, which included an apology from Kimmel, before the show could return to the small screen.
“The idea that I would not have 40 affiliates, I was like, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Because there seemed to be a list of demands presented to me and I was not going to go along with any of them,” he told the audience Wednesday at the Bloomberg Screentime event in Hollywood. “So it was like, ‘Well, I guess we’re done.’ I said to my wife, ‘that’s it. It’s over.’”
Fortunately, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” got back on its feet, returning to air after the brief suspension.
To Kimmel, the suspension “probably went about as good as it could go” since he wanted the chance to explain what he was trying to say after “it was intentionally, and I think, maliciously, mischaracterized.”
Speaking at the Bloomberg Screentime event, this was the first time Kimmel answered questions from a reporter concerning the last month’s blowup, per Deadline and Variety. This comes after he was pulled off the air for a week by ABC and was pre-empted by Nexstar and Sinclair ABC affiliates.
To the delight of fans and fellow celebrities alike, the show returned to air on Sept. 23. Kimmel shared how he prepared for that big night.
“It was something really that had to come from inside me,” he said. “It had to be truthful, and I had to lay it all out there and just be honest about what I was feeling and what I’d experienced. And I think I did. I knew that it wasn’t going to be perfect. There were always going to be people that didn’t like it and didn’t accept it, but the important thing to me was that I was able to explain what I was saying, what I was trying to say.”
When asked about the conversations he had with Disney CEO Bob Iger and co-chairman of Disney Entertainment Dana Walden right after the chaos, Kimmel shared that they were, “really good conversations. These are people that I’ve known for a long time, and who I like very much. We all wanted this to work out best. And I will tell you, first of all, I ruined Dana’s weekend. It was just non stop phone calls all weekend.”
Kimmel made sure to recognize Walden for his huge return.
“But I don’t think the result, which I think turned out to be very positive, would have been as positive if I hadn’t talked to Dana as much as I did, because it helped me think everything through, and it helped me just kind of understand where everyone was coming from because I can sometimes be reactionary.”
As previously reported, the swift decision to take the show off air follows comments Kimmel made about president Donald Trump in the wake of the shooting death of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk, 31, who was gunned down while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pennlive.com ’
