Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be suspended “indefinitely” after comments he made about the killing of Charlie Kirk, ABC has announced, hours after the Trump-appointed chair of the US broadcast regulator threatened broadcasters’ licences if action was not taken against the late night host.
The network, which Disney owns, announced on Wednesday night that it would remove Kimmel’s show from its schedule for the foreseeable future.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said in a statement. Pre-empting means ABC will broadcast another show in the slot instead.
US president Donald Trump later called the move “great news for America” and congratulated ABC for its “courage” in a social media post. “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” he added, in an apparent threat to the shows of NBC late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and two months after the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show.
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ABC’s decision to suspend Mr Kimmel came just minutes after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the US, Nexstar Media, said it “strongly object[ed]” to his comments and would pre-empt any episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! set to air on the stations it owns across the country “for the foreseeable future”. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns more ABC stations than any other TV conglomerate including Nexstar, announced it would run a tribute to Kirk during Kimmel’s time slot on Friday.
Before ABC pulled Kimmel, the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, had urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show, saying they were “running the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” during an appearance on the rightwing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast.
On Wednesday night, Mr Carr thanked Nexstar “for doing the right thing” in a statement on social media.
“Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest,” he wrote. “While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community.”
During his Monday monologue, less than a week after Kirk was shot dead while on a speaking tour in Utah, Mr Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang trying to characterise this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
The suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of firearm and witness tampering, and could face the death penalty.
During his opening monologue for Tuesday night’s show, Mr Kimmel said: “Many in Maga-land are working very hard to capitalise on the murder of Charlie Kirk.” He accused US vice-president JD Vance of blaming the left for Kirk’s death without evidence.
“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” Mr Vance said while hosting an episode of Kirk’s podcast from the White House.
“And by ‘statistical fact’, he means ‘complete bullsh*t’,” Mr Kimmel said to applause, citing a study that found far-right groups were the greatest source of domestic terrorism and extremist violence in the US. The US department of justice has removed the study from its website.
“Here’s a question JD Vance might be able to answer: who wanted to hang the guy who was vice-president before you? Was that the liberal left? Or the toothless army who stormed the Capitol on January 6th?” he said.
Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, called Mr Kimmel’s comments “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
“Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to pre-empt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue,” Mr Alford said.
Mr Kimmel is yet to issue any statement on the matter. – Guardian
