Kimmel, TV, and government coercion
The Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha has many elements to it. For example, the left sees the opportunity to frame it as the Trump administration unfairly pressuring the network to drop Kimmel because it didn’t like his remarks, and succeeding in getting their way.
But it’s perfectly okay for networks to drop shows if they don’t like the content and/or if they’re losing money. Kimmel’s show was already in big financial trouble, and was probably not going to be renewed. What’s more, by the time FCC head Carr made his statements (and I wish he hadn’t made them, because they were unnecessary under the circumstances and also gave the left ammunition for their accusations), the affiliates were already objecting to what Kimmel had said and saying they’d drop him, which put even more financial pressure on ABC to get rid of him even before his contract was up.
Plus, the FCC is actually charged with regulating networks – and there’s a law (unenforced for decades) about equal time for political speech. Some information on that:
Mollie and Mark Hemingway made this point: The federal government really does have a statutory regulatory power over broadcast networks. The airwaves are regulated by the government because we can’t just have six stations all attempting to broadcast on the same frequency in the same area, or else they’d all interfere with each other. So the federal government assigns these valuable spectrum rights to companies, but with restrictions and requirements. One is equal time, and Brenden Carr says he’s going to enforce that requirement.
More here [emphasis mine]:
… Carr makes a very important distinction about jurisdiction. The FCC issues licenses for broadcasters only pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 and other legislation, ie, those whose signal goes out over the public airwaves. As Carr notes (and as I noted briefly last night), the FCC does not have jurisdiction over cable channels such as Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, or others. The FCC has absolutely nothing to do with online outlets either, nor newspapers. …
Most of the offensive material they would normally police has moved to cable or the Internet. The irony of this is that the FCC has largely stood down while the Biden administration essentially created its own OfCom [censorship operation] at the State Department and HHS, funding “misinformation” policing that targeted mainly the online and cable-channel markets. The federal government created censorship regimes on platforms where they had no jurisdiction, while allowing broadcasters to exploit government-provided monopolies with carte blanche on blatantly false content with clear partisan and malicious intent.
Now, one can argue that the FCC really should use a more laissez-faire approach to enforcing the “public interest” clause. However, one can’t argue that the authority doesn’t exist and hasn’t been enforced in the past.
The Biden administration pressured social media to censor the right and statements questioning the administration’s COVID policies, as Mark Zuckerberg has testified.
As the headline to this article says:
So Now the Left Is Against Government Extortion to Suppress Speech?
Congratulations, Democrats. You’re now living in the world you created.
The equal time requirement was never repealed, just ignored.
Also, we have this:
The Commission’s [FCC’s] prohibition against the broadcast of hoaxes is set forth at Section 73.1217 of the Commission’s rules, 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217. This rule prohibits broadcast licensees or permittees from broadcasting false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if:
— the licensee knows this information is false;
— it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and
— broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm.
Kimmel was giving out false information about a crime, and that information could cause public harm (although it doesn’t seem to have actually caused harm in any provable way). You’d also have to prove that Kimmel knew it was false, which could be difficult. So I don’t think this rule would apply.
More here:
First, a summary of what happened. Kimmel during his show’s opening monologue on September 15, 2025 blatantly lied, claiming that Kirk’s murderer was a conservative and part of Trump’s MAGA movement. Not only was this statement fundamentally untrue, based all the available evidence, it was an evil slander against the millions of people who voted for Donald Trump.
The uproar against Kimmel was immediate and gigantic. Within hours local affiliates told ABC they would not air Jimmy Kimmel Live!. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said that if ABC did not take action to publicly correct the record its FCC license could be revoked.
It is important to point out that Kimmel did not lose his job because of government action — though that action was threatened. He got fired because numerous ABC affiliate stations told the network that they would no longer air his show. These local stations decided they had had enough of this slander culture. It had to stop.
ABC was thus forced to take action. It knew that if it didn’t address the concerns of its local affiliates, its entire network could collapse.
Nor is Kimmel’s removal an unjustified action similar to the hundreds of blacklisting cases I have documented since 2020. Kimmel wasn’t fired because he stated an opinion based on reasonable facts — the typical situation when conservatives were blacklisted for the past decade. He was fired for spreading a lie about current events that could be easily verified to be false in only a few seconds of research on line. And the lie was expressly designed to defame Kimmel’s political opponents in the most vile manner.
However, Kimmel didn’t actually say point blank that the killer was MAGA. He said this: “The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel was strongly implying the killer is MAGA and that saying the killer is anything other than MAGA is false. The implicit assumption – no other interpretation makes sense – is that of course the killer is MAGA. That is something for which there is zero evidence and goes against everything police and FBI had said at that point and thereafter. But he may have phrased it that way in an attempt to avoid exactly what happened.
Kimmel’s dodge is reminiscent of the dirty 51 who said Hunter’s laptop had “all the earmarks” of Russian disinformation so they could later claim they weren’t actually lying despite an unmistakable intent to mislead the American public. I didn’t think Kimmel was that smart but then the dirty 51 aren’t as smart as they think they are either.
FOAF:
Yes, similar.
Kimmel may not be that smart. But he also may not write his own material.
Kimmel may not write his own material, but he approves it by speaking it, and is responsible for what he says.
Jimmy:
Absolutely.
Megyn Kelly on Kimmel, and from his own mouth what he claims his show does to “fact check” his monologues (12:48), He knew what he was saying. He knew what had been reported prior to his saying it.: https://youtu.be/ihNE0cDRjos
I’ve read elsewhere that the network wanted him to apologize, but instead he was going to double down.
I agree that the FCC Chairman’s comments were ill-timed, even if correct. However, Kimmel wasn’t fired because of those comments. He was fired for business reasons. He wasn’t bringing in a large enough audience, and advertisers and network affiliates were dropping him. A simple financial decision, and also an attempt to stop him from further destroying the ABC brand.
As for the people trying to excuse him as a comedian “joking around”. His tone was dead serious and no one in the audience was laughing. He was not joking. He was pushing a narrative as hard as he could as that narrative was being totally destroyed. He hoped to muddy the water and allow a big segment of people to believe MAGA that did it.
Unlike the expressing of a sincere difference of opinion (Bill Maher), it is in lying with malicious intent (Jimmy Kimmel) that reveals a soul filled with excrement. However overdue, the removal of excrement is always to be welcomed. Yet the Jimmy Kimmels are symptomatic not causal. He could never have risen to public prominence in a society composed primarily of “a moral and religious people”.
As for the people trying to excuse him as a comedian “joking around”. His tone was dead serious and no one in the audience was laughing. He was not joking. He was pushing a narrative as hard as he could as that narrative was being totally destroyed.
Martin:
That’s the way I read Kimmel’s performance.
Daily Mail says shots were fired at an ABC affiliate in Sacramento, after a previous pro-Kimmel demonstration.
He was taken off the air because Nexstar media said its affiliates would not broadcast the show. ABC followed suit because the lying violates FCC public airwave rules. I saw the clip. There was nothing funny about it, it didn’t even look like he was trying to make any joke. It was reminiscent of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show being serious about current events as if he were a news anchor. I’m for free speech and he said what he wanted to. The program owner is free to exercise their right to take this cratering money suck off the network.
PS: The soulless ghouls have outed themselves by being more upset at someone losing their job over something they said vs Charlie Kirk losing his life for what he said
Kimmel’s wife is executive producer and head writer??? Wow, triple dippers. Also, a whole lot of people are extremely confused about free speech.
I heard that Kimmel got dual Italian/USA citizenship last month. Wouldn’t it be nice if he emigrated, and took his wife with him?
(Sorry, posted earlier in wrong thread.)
If I understand correctly, federal legislation enacted in 1928 and 1934, the country was divvied up into local catchments which were in turn assembled into regional catchments. The wattage of a station was limited by the dimensions of its catchment. X number of licenses were assigned each catchment and twenty licenses were allocated to ‘clear channel’ stations which could reach the whole country at night. However, the deliberations which went into the award of licenses were occult. IMO, it would have been better had the licenses been auctioned for six year periods by qualified bidders who had signed on to a set of terms-and-conditions. A ‘qualified bidder’ might have been defined as a proprietorship, partnership, or limited corporation whose shareholders were all American citizens who had a domicile in the catchment in question. You might limit by law an individual or married couple to stakes in no more than eight stations, require that those changing their residence arrange a private sale of their stake in due time or submit to an auction of their stake, and prohibit the leasing of licenses. The terms-and-conditions, a violation of which could generate a suit to seize your license and debar you from bidding for a term of years, might be to limit advertising chatter to fifteen minutes per hour and to avoid broadcasting smut as defined by a practice manual. The regulations might have favored syndicated programming and the formation of co-operative networks like Mutual over corporate networks like CBS. “Equal time” rules, especially the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ were always a bad business. See Nat Hentoff’s remarks on the Fairness Doctrine derived from his experience as a radio announcer ca. 1949.
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IIRC, cable services ca. 1978 were natural monopolies. The FCC could have required local authorities to auction the franchises. Does anyone familiar with the technology understand why cable channels are offered in packages and not a la carte?
Yes, he explicitly said the killer was MAGA. That’s what it means when he says it’s “one of them”. If you’re going to be this much of a coward, then just stfu and let the people who actually have the spine to speak the truth have your spot.
Scott:
A piece of advice, not that you’ll take it: if you come to troll, don’t lie and say you’re the big courageous truthteller, especially when your lie is so easily exposed by the actual quote from Kimmel.
It’s not courageous to lie about someone. In the case of what Kimmel actually said, the truth is plenty bad enough.
I’m also amused by your contention that I’m taking up the spot of other people. What an odd notion.
Thanks for posting this. Liberals built it, and they own it.