ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show not because the network found his lies about Charlie Kirk’s assassin abhorrent, but rather because local stations decided to serve their communities and no longer be bullied by big Hollywood and their left-wing drivel.
ABC, which is owned by Disney, announced Wednesday that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be suspended indefinitely after the chronically unfunny host decided to lie about the motives of Kirk’s assassin, claiming he was actually a Trump supporter as opposed to yet another foot soldier for left-wing violence.
The national network only did so after local broadcasters and television affiliates under Nexstar and Sinclair said their stations would no longer broadcast Kimmel’s show because the show does not represent good content for the communities they serve.
“They finally stood up for themselves to say, we are we are not going to just be told what to do by the network,” Nathan Leamer, CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies and former policy advisor to former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai, told The Federalist. “They’re saying, ‘Look, we’re going to replace Jimmy Kimmel this week with tributes to Charlie Kirk, because honestly, that’s what our community cares about.’ They know their audiences, which are generally right of center, generally rural America, generally smaller cities, they want to see that. They don’t want to see garbage from Jimmy Kimmel. They don’t want to see garbage from Stephen Colbert. They want to see things that actually represents their values and their virtues.”
As current FCC chairman Brendan Carr explained, broadcasters work under a public interest obligation to their communities, and the affiliates were right to stop broadcasting the show. He said that while enforcement of that obligation has been weak for years, his FCC is looking into enforcement options and that the move from Nexstar and Sinclair is “unprecedented.”
“Sinclair will not lift the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability,” Sinclair said in a statement. “Sinclair also call upon Mr. Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family. Furthermore, Sinclair asks Mr. Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.”
Leamer said that Nexstar’s and Sinclair’s actions are part of a broader effort to reform media ownership rules. Right now, the FCC caps the number of households a single company can reach to 39 percent of the market, meaning none of the companies that own affiliates can compete with national networks like ABC and CBS, or streaming services.
That has made it nearly impossible for more conservative-leaning affiliates like Nexstar and Sinclair to wield enough power to stop the content creation force of Hollywood. But, in something of a David and Goliath story, removing Kimmel from their channels and successfully forcing ABC to cave means the tide is turning. If the FCC can reform the rules and increase the cap, companies will be able to own bigger market shares, consolidate resources, and actually start producing more of their own, high quality, localized content for the communities they serve.
The net effect would strip the power of left-wingers in Hollywood to force their content into the homes of Americans.
It might seem bizarre to want a media company to consolidate more of the market, but doing so will allow for the greater production and distribution of conservative — or at the very least, not extremely left-wing nonsense from Hollywood — content that Americans actually want to see.
That has been a goal of Nexstar and Sinclair for years, Leamer said, adding that when he was at the FCC during the first Trump administration, an attempt to reform, but left-wing interest groups lied to Americans, saying their affiliates would be taken away.
“They are afraid of The Federalist having their own TV station,” he said, as an example. “They are deathly afraid of Sinclair having reporters and narratives that are not upholding their liberal, progressive view, and they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent conservatives from growing their media market share because even though we do not own all the media like established media institutions, we are creating new ones. We’re creating better ones.”
Right now, Hollywood uses its power over affiliates as a “consistent money stream” which they can turn around and use to build new studios, streaming services, and bankroll some of the propagandistic slop they produce in order to destroy American culture. “They recognize that they need to grab every dollar, and they do not want conservatives to be able to push back and tell their story through different narratives,” Leamer said.
Just as conservatives have revolutionized the media space with alternative outlets and podcasting, they may soon have the ability to reject Hollywood’s attempts to subvert American culture and community, replacing it with more enriching content.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
