FCC Chairman Debunks the Left’s Lies About Kimmel’s Suspension

[SVPete]

FCC Chairman Debunks the Left’s Lies About Kimmel’s Suspension

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/09/19/fcc-chairman-debunks-the-lefts-lies-about-kimmels-suspension-n4943909

For two days now, the media has breathlessly repeated the false claim that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr personally ordered ABC to yank Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians were quick to spin this as some assault on free speech, with Carr supposedly carrying out a personal vendetta on behalf of President Trump.

There’s just one problem with that narrative: it never happened. In fact, Carr called it pure projection from the very people who have a history of leaning on networks and tech companies to silence conservatives.

On Dana Loesch’s podcast, Carr dismantled the left’s lies. Loesch began by playing a clip from Good Morning America, which framed Kimmel’s suspension as if Carr himself had pulled the plug. She pressed him directly: had he really called up ABC, Nexstar, and Sinclair to force them to get rid of Kimmel?

Carr’s response was blunt: “No, not at all. But it does, I guess, tell a better story for partisans on the left.”

Carr went on to explain how the media ecosystem actually works. National programmers like Disney and Comcast don’t hold FCC licenses and therefore don’t have a direct obligation to operate in the public interest. That responsibility falls on local broadcasters, which are licensed by the FCC and entrusted with serving their communities. For years, however, the big national players used their clout to dictate what local stations aired—forcing Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and other late-night propagandists into markets that weren’t interested.

But according to Carr, what happened with Kimmel was a long-overdue correction. “Local TV stations said, ‘I don’t want to run this Kimmel stuff and we’re going to preempt it.’ And that’s a really important moment of local TV stations standing up for their viewers and pushing back against Comcast and Disney,” he explained.

Hate-Trumpers are lying, as usual. Disney made a marketplace decision about an arrogant entitled show host.

[SVPete]

The real reason Jimmy Kimmel was sacked

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-real-reason-jimmy-kimmel-was-sacked/

Jimmy Kimmel, one of that new breed of unfunny comedians, has hosted a daily late-night show on ABC for the last ten years, during which time his ratings have dropped by a third, hardly surprising as he has insulted half of his audience night after night.

His suspension was imposed after three days of mocking and making sick jokes on air about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. According to the commentariat over here, this is dangerous censorship, an attack on free speech, state control of the media, blah, blah. Such claims expose a total ignorance of what has been going on in the US.

Kimmel’s ‘sacking’ was a business decision, pure and simple. Anybody who has watched the output from the left-wing US media such as ABC, CNN and MSNBC, will know that they still devote every hour of the day to virulent anti-Trump propaganda and lies. The idea that their bosses now want to suck up to the President is beyond ludicrous.

The reality is that Kimmel’s sickening rants over the last week led to many of ABC’s affiliates pulling Kimmel Live from their channels – in the US, large TV companies such as ABC rely on these affiliates to carry broadcasts to local cable viewers. Large affiliates, including Nextstar, Sinclair, Gray and Tegna all pulled the programme. Nextstar’s CEO cited a ‘breach of journalistic standards’, while Sinclair’s executive chairman David Smith called the remarks ‘divisive and irresponsible’.

With this wholesale loss of syndication, coupled with advertisers also pulling ads, ABC had little choice but to dump Kimmel. Executives from Disney, who own ABC, including CEO Bob Iger and co-chair Dana Walden, cited a surge in ‘advertiser calls’ as a primary factor in suspending the show. These calls reportedly started rolling in after Kimmel’s September 15 monologue, with brands expressing concerns over the ‘insensitive’ remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death potentially damaging their reputations amid national tensions.

KXTV 10 Sacramento, whose offices got shot at a couple of days ago, is owned by Tegna, and might have been among the stations that had preempted Kimmel before the suspension. I have not (yet) seen more info about that shooter, but whether he was an ectivist for an Indian healthcare outfit or a legislative lobbyist/analyst for the teacher's union (both?), he's not the white Christian MAGA gun nut Progs seek.