On Wednesday ABC announced they're preempting the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" program indefinitely, due to his terrible and biased comments surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his wrong-head theories about Kirk's alleged killer.
Read it Here: ABC Preempting 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' Indefinitely After Vile Comments About Charlie Kirk’s Murder
People Who Want 'Misinformation' Regulated Are Mad Jimmy Kimmel Got Pulled Over Misinformation
The ignorant and uninformed voices on the left are crying foul, claiming cancel culture and censorship. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" to draw the bright line between how an organization that holds an FCC license is required to operate as opposed to a cable or streaming organization like Fox News or CNN.
Hannity asked Carr to expound on the obligations of Nexstar Media Group, the ABC affiliate that first announced they were dropping Kimmel from their lineup, and how Kimmel crossed the line by putting their licenses in jeopardy.
Carr said:
Broadcasters are different than any other form of communication, including here. We're on cable right now. Fox News doesn't have an FCC license, CNN doesn't. But ABC, CBS, NBC, those broadcast stations do. And with that license comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. And over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation. I don't think we're better off as a country for it. But look, President Trump ran directly at these legacy broadcast outlets and he exposed them to these market forces, and a lot of these affiliate groups said, to your point, "We're tired of carrying this stuff." Late night shows, something's gone seriously awry there. They went from going from laugh lines to applause lines, from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics enforcing a very narrow political ideology.
Carr went further, pointing out that the choice for Nexstar was to continue to allow Kimmel to be a liability or maintain their licenses. They chose their ability to hold licenses over a bloated, overpriced, and unfunny talent.
And Nexstar, as you noted, stood up and said, look, we have the license and we don't want to run this anymore; we don't think it serves the interest of our community. Sinclair did the same thing. So, there's more work to go, but I'm very glad to see that America's broadcasters are standing up to sort of the interests of their communities, so we don't just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.
Hannity and Carr discussed President Trump's role in holding the broadcasters accountable and realigning the FCC toward looking out for the public good. Carr affirmed,
President Trump ran against immense odds. The legacy media outlets threw everything at him, almost every single hoax imaginable. Right? Biden is sharp as a tack. Burying the Hunter Biden laptop story, the Russia collusion hoax. And most politicians would have gone along with that narrative or not fought at all. But President Trump punched back, and when he did so, he was standing up for the American people that simply don't trust those outlets anymore. We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there's broadcasters out there that don't like it, they can turn their license in to the FCC. But that's our job, again, we're making some progress now.
Hannity asked the question on whether the broadcasters were focused on adhering to one side's political agenda as a form of in-kind donation. Carr agreed, saying:
I think there's evidence of that. Look, running a narrow, partisan circus, whatever the public interest means, it's not that. We are working reinvigorate that. This action today by Nexstar and Sinclair, frankly, it's unprecedented. I can't imagine another time when we've have local broadcasters tell, what we'd call a national programmer like Disney, that your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community. So, this is an important turning point.
And frankly, speaking of that, obviously, Charlie Kirk set out to change the country, to change the culture and the result of his work are continuing to produce results, and that's a good thing.
Hannity referenced former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno, and how he raised the question upon the cancellation of CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on why any comedian worth his salt would want to alienate half of their audience by playing partisan politics rather than simply striving to be funny. Carr spoke to the bottom line: ratings equal advertising dollars, and the ratings of these programs had not been there for years. He said,
Yeah, I mean, you can't avoid ratings. At the end of the day the market is going to be undefeated. And a lot of these corporations, Disney and Comcast, they had been protecting, and frankly subsidizing, this content. Again, once President Trump smashed that facade, he gave a permission structure to local broadcasters to finally stand up. And when you're losing money — in the case of Colbert, reportedly 50 million dollars — that's only going to go so far. The same thing with Kimmel: they are now facing the consequences of the choices that they made to appeal to a narrow audience. Again, you can do that: you can start a podcast, you can go on YouTube. But if you are going to have a license from the FCC we expect you to broadly serve the public interest.
Jimmy Kimmel is shockingly unfunny, hateful, political, etc. -- but even for him, his malicious lies about the assassin and the assassin's motivations were beneath contempt. Of course the people who carry his show didn't want to participate in his evil disinformation campaign.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 18, 2025
When you look at the ratings, the public had checked out years ago and, like Colbert's show, Kimmel's "Live!" Was on life support. After Kimmel's egregious comments, ABC chose to finally pull the plug. Perhaps these outlets will promote entertainment that will appeal to all Americans and not compromise their ability to maintain FCC licensure.
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