A pair of corporations that own about a quarter of the nation’s local ABC stations will continue to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” when the show returns to the air Tuesday night.
But residents of Massachusetts, eager to catch the late-night show’s return, days after it was pulled from the air, can rest easy. Nexstar and Sinclair, the two companies still blocking the show, do not own any ABC affiliates based in Massachusetts.
Nexstar owns WWLP, based in Springfield, but the station is an NBC affiliate, so it wouldn’t air Kimmel’s show anyway. The company does own two ABC affiliates in New England: WVNY-TV, which broadcasts in Vermont, Northern New York and parts of New Hampshire, and WTNH News 8 in Connecticut.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney, which owns ABC, said in a Sept. 22 statement to news outlets.
“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
ABC suspended Kimmel indefinitely after comments he made in a monologue last week. Kimmel suggested that many Trump supporters were trying to capitalize on Kirk’s death and were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
In Massachusetts, WWLP, which serves the Springfield/Holyoke market area, is owned by Nexstar. But the station is an NBC affiliate.
Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr last week said it appeared that Kimmel was trying to “directly mislead the American public” with his remarks about Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man charged with Kirk’s killing, and his motives. Those motives remain unclear. Authorities say Robinson grew up in a conservative family, but his mother told investigators his son had turned left politically in the last year.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said before ABC announced the suspension. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Those remarks set a backlash in motion, with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz saying that Carr acted like “a mafioso.” Hundreds of entertainment luminaries, including Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Aniston, signed a letter circulated by the American Civil Liberties Union that called ABC’s move “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.”
Some consumers punished ABC parent Disney by canceling subscriptions to its streaming services.
Trump had hailed Kimmel’s suspension, even inaccurately saying the show had been canceled. Kimmel has been a relentless Trump critic in his comedy.
Trump’s administration has used threats, lawsuits and federal government pressure to try to exert more control over the media industry. Trump sued ABC and CBS over news coverage, which the companies settled. Trump has also filed defamation lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and successfully urged Congress to strip federal funding from NPR and PBS.
How — or even whether — Kimmel would address the controversy on his first show back remained a mystery. Millions of people are likely to watch.
Disney and ABC executives reportedly negotiated the return for several days before announcing the resolution. The ABC statement said the suspension happened because some of Kimmel’s comments were “ill-timed and thus insensitive,” but it did not call them misleading.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk and now headed by his widow, posted on X that “Disney and ABC caving and allowing Kimmel back on the air is not surprising, but it’s their mistake to make.”
The suspension happened at a time when the late-night landscape is shifting. Shows are losing viewers, in part because many watch highlights the next day online.
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