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Sept. 24 (UPI) — The FCC is prohibited from influencing network content but Chairman Brendan Carr and President Donald Trump have used pressure campaigns on ABC and others to test those limits.

The Trump administration’s attempt to push Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air worked, briefly. While consumer backlash convinced Disney and ABC to reverse course, the alarm has been sounded over the weaponization of federal authority to suppress free speech.

Kimmel returned to ABC on Tuesday, lamenting the importance of standing up for free speech in his opening monologue, calling attempts to take shows like his off the air for sharing dissenting opinions “un-American.”

“Ten years ago this sounded crazy: Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,'” Kimmel said. “In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, it is not a particularly intelligent threat to be made in public.”

Section 326 of the Communications Act states that the commission cannot interfere with the right to exercise free speech.

Former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, who served during the Obama administration, told UPI Carr is bringing the commission into “uncharted territory.”

“The FCC is approaching 100 years old,” Wheeler said. “Over that period, one of its primary purposes has been to make sure when it comes to broadcasters using the people’s airwaves that there is a diversity of voices and a diversity of ownership.”

“That’s something that has held true until today, when we see the chairman of the FCC attempting to influence what people hear and we hear the president of the United States saying that he wants to consider yanking the broadcast licenses for those who don’t agree with him,” he continued.

One of the FCC’s chief responsibilities is licensing. It is responsible for ensuring that licenses are distributed and used in the public’s interest, convenience and necessity. The statute does not go on to define what public interest means, leaving it up to the heads of the FCC to determine this over the years.

Throughout its history, according to Wheeler, FCC chairmen have taken seriously the importance of fulfilling their duties in a neutral and independent way.

The FCC operations manual refers to Section 326 of the Communications Act and the First Amendment, stating that both “expressly prohibit the commission from censoring broadcast matter. Our role in overseeing program content is very limited.”

“Those are pretty explicit,” Wheeler said of the First Amendment and Section 326. “The public interest definition ought to presumably fall within the four corners of those kinds of descriptions.”

The FCC’s role in overseeing content may be limited, as its manual acknowledges, but it still has influence.

Networks are required to renew their licenses every eight years. This applies to all networks, including major networks like ABC and local companies.

The FCC must also approve the transfer of licenses when companies merge. For example, when Disney bought ABC, the ownership of its licenses needed to reflect this transfer of ownership. This is also true for companies like Sinclair and Nexstar purchasing local networks.

Nexstar has an agreement in place to purchase Tegna for $6.2 billion. If the deal is approved, Nexstar would own 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, including 132 of the top 210 TV markets in the country, expanding its reach to 80% of U.S. households.

The FCC has a 39% cap on how many households a network group can reach. It is called the National Television Ownership rule and its purpose is to maintain diversity, competition and localism by preventing a small number of companies from controlling the airwaves.

In June, the FCC Media Bureau filed a public notice that it seeks new public comments to refresh the record on television network ownership rules. It is looking for input on whether it should retain, modify or eliminate the 39% cap on network ownership. It last did this in 2017.

“The FCC has an economic lever over those that it regulates,” Wheeler said. “There’s economic leverage that Brendan Carr has been very successful in playing up.”

Nexstar owns 32 ABC affiliate networks and Sinclair owns more than 30. Both announced Tuesday that they will not air Jimmy Kimmel Live! despite ABC electing to bring it back.

The licenses held by networks permit them to use the public’s airwaves to broadcast content. It does not give them ownership of those airwaves. They belong to the public.

The licensing renewal process is usually straightforward and without much controversy, Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute senior fellow and public advocate, told UPI.

“Throughout almost the entire history of the FCC there has been one time and one time only that the FCC has denied a license renewal based on the content of programming,” Sohn said. “That was in the ’60s when a Mississippi radio and TV station refused to run any news program or any program of any kind about the Civil Rights movement and instead ran racist programming.”

Sohn added that the FCC, in that instance, did not tell the station it could not run one program and had to run another or had to change how it edited its programs. Instead, it determined the station was not serving the public interest because it was not giving its audience access to all the information related to the stories it was broadcasting.

“That is something that the FCC has the right to do when it looks at the overall programming of a broadcaster,” Sohn said. “What it doesn’t have the right to do is bully a network — into dropping one program because he made a joke about, not even about the president, not about Charlie Kirk, but about the way the president’s followers were reacting to the Kirk murder.”

After Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on his late-night show about the late Charlie Kirk, the FCC chairman threatened to take action against ABC and parent company Disney. Media companies Nexstar and Sinclair quickly followed with statements that were critical of Kimmel’s comments.

Within hours of Carr’s threats, ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be preempted indefinitely.

According to Sohn and Wheeler, Carr wielded his regulatory power in this instance to influence ABC to remove Kimmel’s show from the airwaves due to his longtime criticism of the president. They add that it is not the first time Carr has done something like this since becoming chairman earlier this year.

A pending merger between Skydance and Paramount remained under scrutiny by Carr and the FCC for months before being approved in July. During the hold up, Carr investigated CBS News over its editorial decisions.

Trump meanwhile had an open lawsuit against CBS, seeking $20 billion over allegations that 60 Minutes edited an interview with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a way that was favorable to her and her candidacy. On July 2, it was reported that Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, settled with Trump for $16 million.

The FCC approved the Skydance-Paramount merger on July 24. As conditions of the merger, Skydance agreed to Carr’s demands that the company will end or not establish any diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

It also agreed to hire an ombudsman to oversee CBS News editorial decisions. The ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, is the former president and CEO of conservative think tank the Hudson Institute.

Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, told UPI a bad precedent is being set by networks like ABC and CBS as they give into pressure from the FCC and the president.

“Not only does it show the administration that these guys are going to cave and therefore we can keep pushing them, but it also means we won’t get coverage when the administration does this to other companies,” Feld said. “If the news has been cowed into submission it means the administration is free to do this to anyone and nobody will find out about it.”

Former FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez issued a statement after the suspension of Kimmel’s program was reinstated.

“As this FCC considers steps that would let the same billion-dollar media conglomerates that caved in to government pressure grow even bigger, we must combat these efforts to stifle free expression,” Gomez said.

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The recent suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is an attack on democracy. Though not necessarily the democracy one might think.

Free speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. This grants the late-night host the freedom to say whatever he thinks without fear of arrest or state-sanctioned violence. It does not necessarily guarantee that he will not be censured, or fired, if his remarks violate his employer’s rules or standards.

President Trump discovered this in 2015 when, citing inflammatory remarks the then-presidential candidate made about undocumented Mexican immigrants, NBC — the network that aired “The Apprentice” and Trump’s Miss Universe pageant — cut ties with him.

This is the most obvious explanation for Trump declaring war on television, despite it being the industry that, via “The Apprentice” and a deluge of coverage during his first presidential campaign, helped propel him to the presidency. Paybacks are a b— and this particular president thrives on them.

And it is definitely war. Trump has a long history of attacking various TV networks and personalities, including Kimmel. The regularity, name-checking and vitriol of these attacks far outstrip the anger many presidents have expressed toward the media, but they are in keeping with Trump’s general brand of “whataboutism” and victimization.

A brand that last year a majority of voters decided, in a free and fair election, represented their best interests.

What they did not vote for, because it was not part of Trump’s platform or promises, was the weaponization of his office in general, and the FCC in particular, to destroy the democracy of broadcast television.

First by a spurious suit against “60 Minutes,” which many believe was settled to allow the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance Media to go forward, then with CBS (owned by Paramount) canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and now with the suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Television is an industry that relies on a continual public voting system — people watch or they don’t watch, and the networks renew, cancel and tweak their programming accordingly. This is an oversimplification of a byzantine and often mysterious system that often involves the personal preferences of network executives and, increasingly, algorithms, but essentially the viewers are in charge — with their eyeballs and, occasionally, their outrage.

If, as the president claims, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” had been canceled due to its low ratings or suspended after Kimmel’s recent remarks caused longtime viewers to inundate ABC or the show’s sponsors with messages of outrage, fans would have been upset, but it would have been a mere blip in the news cycle.

But that is not what happened. Instead, a handful of conservative pundits who have made it their business to punish anyone who mentions slain influencer Charlie Kirk with anything but near-sanctification used a few ill-chosen but innocuous lines regarding the crime in Kimmel’s opening monologue Monday to call for swift and terrible retribution.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr answered the call. On the podcast “The Benny Show,” hosted by right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson, he threatened television affiliates with regulatory action if they did not take action against Kimmel.

He did so knowing that Nexstar, which owns many of those affiliates, was attempting to buy Tegna, in order to gain control of over 80% of U.S. television stations. That merger would require not just FCC approval but Carr’s willingness to eliminate the rule that prevents any media company from owning more than 39% of television stations.

Nexstar appeared to do precisely what Carr demanded of them. As did ABC/Disney, which decided that the loss of revenue from these affiliates, and the animosity of Trump and his supporters, posed a bigger threat than the potential fallout from pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air. (And good luck getting the four-time Oscars host to emcee this ceremony again in the future.)

Perhaps it did. But given that “seize the media” and “silence comedians” are historical hallmarks of totalitarianism, the resulting three-day-and-counting news cycle, in which Carr, Trump and Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger have been regularly accused of dismantling democracy, has given anti-MAGA forces a new and legitimate rallying cry.

All while pushing broadcast television just a bit closer to the edge of extinction.

Nexstar denied that it benched Kimmel due to pressure from Carr.

“The decision to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision,” Gary Weitman, Nexstar’s chief communications officer, said in a statement.

Trump’s obsession with broadcast networks and late-night hosts is perilous, and not just because it underlines his desire to attack culture with every means at his disposal (including those that may not be legal).

Certainly, it exposes his authoritarian bent, but it also reveals his anachronistic view of the world.

First, in these divisive times, having critics allows your supporters to coalesce around hating them. And second, broadcast television, including and especially late night, has been in its death throes for more than a decade.

As alarming, unacceptable and authoritarian as the attacks on “60 Minutes,” Colbert and Kimmel are, media freedom is not going to die on this particular hill for the simple reason that it is no longer the free media’s main residence.

Carr ordered his hit on Kimmel not from the comforts of “Fox & Friends” but on a podcast. Trump still delivers televised speeches, but most of his communications and policy decisions are delivered via social media.

The tsunami of corporate mergers involving television networks and streaming services have occurred not because these things are profitable tools of power but because, at least separately, they are not. YouTube is the most popular media platform in the country.

As Trump points out, Kimmel’s television ratings are very low — less than 2 million on average. Kimmel himself has said that he and other late-night shows get far more viewers from clips on social media than on television. If he and Colbert decide to take their voices straight to social media, well, good luck controlling that.

There is certainly much to fear in Trump’s brazen attacks on venerable institutions like “60 Minutes” and late-night television (though with conservatives like Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson siding, at least in principle, with Kimmel, things may not be going quite the way Carr or Trump planned), but as Kirk knew, one doesn’t need a television show to be an effective, influential voice.

Seen from one angle, Trump is most certainly attempting to quash what we have come to know as democracy. But from another, it’s a grudge-holding president kicking the industry that helped him achieve power when it’s already struggling for breath.

Watch the moment a group of Israeli activists stormed a live television broadcast to protest Israel’s war on Gaza. Members of Standing Together, wearing ‘Leave Gaza’ T-shirts, jumped onto the stage during the airing of the Big Brother show on Channel 13.

The BBC has signed a broadcast deal with Boxxer which will mean world-class professional boxing returns to prime-time television and BBC iPlayer.

Over the next 12 months, the BBC will air fights from selected events on BBC Two or Three as well as on iPlayer and the BBC Sport website.

Boxxer currently houses some of the biggest talents in UK boxing including Olympic and world champion Lauren Price.

“Bringing professional boxing back to primetime BBC television, free-to-air, and to our extensive digital platforms is an exciting moment for us and hopefully for boxing fans,” said Alex Kay-Jelski, director of BBC Sport.

The first event is expected to happen by the end of the year, with dates and headliners to be announced in the coming weeks.

Boxxer, led by promoter Ben Shalom, staged an all-women’s card headlined by Price and Natasha Jonas in March as well as promoting Amir Khan v Kell Brook, Liam Smith v Chris Eubank Jr, Claressa Shields v Savannah Marshall and Fabio Wardley v Frazer Clarke in recent years.

“Partnering with the BBC to deliver big-time British boxing on Saturday night TV is a historic moment,” Shalom said.

“We’re proud to bring the most entertaining British fighters to the biggest possible audience.

“This huge platform will give our fights the exposure they deserve and helps us take the sport to huge new audiences.”

July 17 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate early Thursday voted to rescind some $9 billion in federal funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, two areas of the government that the Trump administration has long targeted for cuts.

The senators voted 51-48 mostly along party lines to approve House Bill 4 with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining the Democrats in voting against it.

The bill, which now goes to the House of Representatives, will cut about $8 billion from international aid programs and about $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The bill passed at about 2:20 a.m. EDT Thursday.

“President Trump promised to cut wasteful spending and root out misuse of taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said on X prior to the vote. “Now, @SenateGOP and I are voting to make these cuts permanent. Promises made, promises kept.”

The vote comes as the Trump administration faces criticism from Democrats, and some Republicans, for having promised to reduce government spending but then last month passed a massive tax and spending cuts bill that is expected to add $3.3 trillion to the U.S. deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, the Cato Institute states it could add nearly double that, as much as $6 trillion.

The Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which funds local news and radio infrastructure, has been a target of the Trump administration for funding a small portion of the budgets of PBS and NPR, which he accuses of being biased.

Murkowski chastised her fellow Republicans for attacking a service that informed Alaskans that same day that there was a magnitude 7.3 earthquake and a tsunami warning.

“Some colleagues claim they are targeting ‘radical leftist organizations’ with these cuts, but in Alaska, these are simply organizations dedicated to their communities,” she said on social media. “Their response to today’s earthquake is a perfect example of the incredible public service these stations provide. They deliver local news, weather updates and, yes, emergency alerts that save human lives.”

The BBC issued a formal apology after broadcasting a controversial performance from the rap-punk group Bob Vylan at England’s Glastonbury festival.

Bob Vylan — outspoken critics of Israel’s war on Gaza — led its crowd at last weekend’s festival in a chant of “Death to the IDF,” or Israel Defense Forces.

The BBC’s director- general Tim Davie wrote to staff in an internal memo on Thursday. “I deeply regret that such offensive and deplorable behavior appeared on the BBC and want to say sorry — to our audience and to all of you, but in particular to Jewish colleagues and the Jewish community,” Davie said. “We are unequivocal that there can be no place for antisemitism at the BBC.”

The broadcaster announced several policy changes for future festival broadcasts, including keeping “high risk” acts off live broadcasts and live streams.

Bob Vylan’s set led to some backlash within the music industry and beyond. The comments prompted local police to open a criminal investigation, and the band’s U.S. visas were revoked for its upcoming performances. The band’s agency, UTA, reportedly dropped them as well.

The band’s singer, who performs as Bobby Vylan, wrote on Instagram after the set that “teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place,” adding, “Let them see us marching in the streets, campaigning on ground level, organising online and shouting about it on any and every stage that we are offered.”

The Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap, a fellow Glastonbury performer, has also come under scrutiny for its outspoken criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. The band’s Glastonbury set was not broadcast live. The group’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs as Mo Chara, had been charged with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a flag from the terror group Hezbollah at a London concert in 2024 (Chara denied the charge). U.K. prosecutors also recently dropped charges against Kneecap after a 2023 concert where Chara allegedly said, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

Saturday afternoon out west and evening back east, as citizens faced off against ICE agents in the streets of Los Angeles, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney’s 2005 dramatic film tribute to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, became a Major Television Event, broadcast live from Manhattan’s Winter Garden Theater, by CNN and Max. That it was made available free to anyone with an internet connection, via the CNN website, was a nice gesture to theater fans, Clooney stans and anyone interested to see how a movie about television translates into a play about television.

The broadcast is being ballyhooed as historic, the first time a play has been aired live from Broadway. And while there is no arguing with that fact, performances of plays have been recorded onstage before, and are being so now. It’s a great practice; I wish it were done more often. At the moment, PBS.org is streaming recent productions of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate!,” the Bob Dylan-scored “Girl From the North Country,” David Henry Hwang‘s “Yellow Face” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning mental health rock musical “Next to Normal.” Britain’s National Theater at Home subscription service offers a wealth of classical and modern plays, including Andrew Scott’s one-man “Vanya,” as hot a ticket in New York this spring as Clooney’s play. And the archives run deep; that a trip to YouTube can deliver you Richard Burton’s “Hamlet” or “Sunday in the Park With George” with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters is a gift not to be overlooked.

Clooney, with co-star Anthony Edwards, had earlier been behind a live broadcast of “Ambush,” the fourth season opener of “ER” as a throwback to the particular seat-of-your-pants, walking-on-a-wire energy of 1950s television. (It was performed twice, once for the East and once for the West Coast.) That it earned an audience of 42.71 million, breaking a couple of records in the bargain, suggests that, from a commercial perspective, it was not at all a bad idea. (Reviews were mixed, but critics don’t know everything.)

Like that episode, the “live” element of Saturday’s broadcast was essentially a stunt, though one that ensured, at least, that no post-production editing has been applied, and that if anyone blew a line, or the house was invaded by heckling MAGA hats, or simply disrupted by audience members who regarded the enormous price they paid for a ticket as a license to chatter through the show, it would presumably have been part of the broadcast. None of that happened — but, it could have! (Clooney did stumble over “simple,” but that’s all I caught.) And, it offered the groundlings at home the chance to see a much-discussed, well-reviewed production only a relatively few were able to see in person — which I applaud on principal and enjoyed in practice — and which will very probably not come again, not counting the next day’s final performance.

Glenn Fleshler, left, plays Fred Friendly in the stage production, a role that George Clooney performed in the film version of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

(Emilio Madrid)

The film, directed by Clooney and co-written with Grant Heslov (who co-wrote the stage version as well), featured the actor as producer and ally Fred W. Friendly to David Strathairn’s memorable Murrow. Here, a more aggressive Clooney takes the Murrow role, while Glenn Fleshler plays Friendly. Released during the second term of the Bush administration, the movie was a meditation on the state of things through the prism of 1954 (and a famous framing speech from 1958 about the possibilities and potential failures of television), the fear-fueled demagoguery of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Murrow’s determination to take him on. (The 1954 “See It Now” episode, “A Report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” helped bring about his end.) As in the film, McCarthy is represented entirely through projected film clips, echoing the way that Murrow impeached the senator with his own words.

It’s a combination of political and backstage drama — with a soupcon of office romance, represented by the secretly married Wershbas (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson) — even more hermetically set within the confines of CBS News than was the film. It felt relevant in 2005, before the influence of network news was dissolved in the acid of the internet and an administration began assaulting the legitimate press with threats and lawsuits; but the play’s discussions of habeas corpus, due process, self-censoring media and the both-sides-ism that seems increasingly to afflict modern media feel queasily contemporary. “I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument,” says Clooney’s Murrow to his boss, William F. Paley (an excellent Paul Gross, from the great “Slings & Arrows”). As was shown here, Murrow offered McCarthy equal time on “See It Now” — which he hosted alongside the celebrity-focused “Person to Person,” represented by an interview with Liberace — but it proved largely a rope for the senator to hang himself.

Though modern stage productions, with their computer-controlled modular parts, can replicate the rhythms and scene changes of a film, there are obvious differences between a movie, where camera angles and editing drive the story. It’s an illusion of life, stitched together from bits and pieces. A stage play proceeds in real time and offers a single view (differing, of course, depending on where one sits), within which you direct your attention as you will. What illusions it offers are, as it were, stage magic. It’s choreographed, like a dance, which actors must repeat night after night, putting feeling into lines they may speak to one another, but send out to the farthest corners of the theater.

Clooney, whose furrowed brow is a good match for Murrow’s, did not attempt to imitate him, or perhaps did within the limits of theatrical delivery; he was serious and effective in the role if not achieving the quiet perfection of Strathairn’s performance. Scott Pask‘s set was an ingenious moving modular arrangement of office spaces, backed by a control room, highlighted or darkened as needs be; a raised platform stage left supported the jazz group and vocalist, which, as in the movie, performed songs whose lyrics at times commented slyly on the action. Though television squashed the production into two dimensions, the broadcast nevertheless felt real and exciting; director David Comer let the camera play on the players, rather than trying for a cinematic effect through an excess of close-ups and cutaways.

While the play generally followed the lines of the film, there was some rearrangement of scenes, reassignment of dialogue — it was a streamlined cast — and interpolations to make a point, or more directly pitch to 2025. New York news anchor Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg, very moving in the only role with an emotional arc) described feeling “hijacked … as if all the reasonable people went to Europe and left us behind,” getting a big reaction. One character wondered about opening “the door to news with a dash of commentary — what happens when it isn’t Edward R. Murrow minding the store?” A rapid montage of clips tracking the decay of TV news and politics — including Obama’s tan suit kerfuffle and the barring of AP for not bowing to Trump’s Gulf of America edit and ending with Elon Musk’s notorious straight-arm gesture, looking like nothing so much as a Nazi salute — was flown into Clooney’s final speech.

Last but not least, there is the audience, your stand-ins at the Winter Garden Theatre, which laughed at the jokes and applauded the big speeches, transcribed from Murrow’s own. And then, the curtain call, to remind you that whatever came before, the actors are fine, drinking in your appreciation and sending you out happy and exhilarated and perhaps full of hope.

A CNN roundtable followed to bring you back to Earth.

Baseball isn’t boring and the CW isn’t stupid, at least when it comes to the Savannah Bananas, the Georgia-based team that has rewritten the rules around the classic American pastime. The network has picked up rights to broadcast the July 27 Bananas game at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia.

“Banana Ball” incorporates humor, gymnastics, lip syncs and snappy dance choreography in a minor league baseball game with rules that definitely don’t match those of Major League Baseball — though many of the players once had MLB aspirations. This year the team has sold out 18 major league ballparks, plus three football stadiums with capacities of more than 70,000.

The CW in recent years has been leaning into live sports coverage, which has generally been delivering ratings results in a rapidly changing TV-viewing landscape. The network has the NASCAR Xfinity Series, WWE NXT on Tuesday nights, Grand Slam Track, AVP beach volleyball on summer Saturdays, ACC and Pac-12 football games in the fall and, starting next year, PBA professional bowling.

The Savannah Bananas come with a built-in audience earned via posts on TikTok, Facebook Reels and the like. The team has 10 million followers on TikTok alone.

The Savannah Bananas, a minor league baseball club, went on their first ever “World Tour” this year, taking their unique brand of baseball to various cities across America.

“We’ve always been very clear about our goal,” Bananas owner Jesse Cole told The Times in 2022. “We exist to make baseball fun.”

“It’s all about energy. We want to give people energy, delivering it every second, from the moment we open the gates at two o’clock until the last fan leaves at 11,” he added over the weekend, when the team played to a sellout crowd at Anaheim Stadium.

There’s definitely an audience appetite for the Savannah team: There are tickets available for games in August and September, but only through a lottery — and the wait list for the lottery is more than 3 million names long. Last season’s games drew a million fans total.

On Friday, the only way into the Anaheim game was through the resale market. Hours before the first pitch, the lowest price (fees and taxes included) for a pair of Bananas tickets on StubHub was $209.52, while it took a mere $171.72 to snag a pair of tickets to the Yankees-Dodgers series opener at Dodger Stadium the same night.

Who needs Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge anyway: Banana Ball has the Savannah team facing rival outfits the Texas Tailgaters, the Firefighters, the Party Animals and the Visitors.

And while Ohtani and Judge can be counted on for multiple home runs, only the Bananas deliver baby races, a dancing umpire and backflips before balls are caught in the outfield. Plus the games are limited to two hours max, something even the much-loved MLB pitch clock can’t deliver.

“The Savannah Bananas have taken the sports world by storm through their high-energy blend of baseball and entertainment that connects with viewers of all ages,” Mike Perman, senior vice president of CW Sports, said in a statement Tuesday.

“We are thrilled to partner with them for their broadcast television debut, and we cannot wait to bring our audience every unpredictable play in front of what promises to be an electric atmosphere in Philadelphia.”

“Banana Ball on The CW is a no-brainer,” Bananas owner Cole added in that news release. “After seeing their recent commitment to sports, we knew this could be a great partnership. With the speed and entertainment of Banana Ball, we look forward to creating new fans together in the years to come.”

Times staff writer David Wharton and Times fellow Anthony De Leon contributed to this report.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke will build a movie studio next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood that will serve as the international broadcast center for the 2028 Olympic Games.

Construction will start by summer on the studio and production facility that will house hundreds of broadcasters from around the world that have acquired rights to cover the Summer Games in Los Angeles, Kroenke’s company said Tuesday.

After the Games, the facility known as Hollywood Park Studios will be used to make movies, television shows and other productions and perhaps host live broadcasts.

The development is part of Hollywood Park, a multibillion-dollar complex built on the site of a former horse racing track also known as Hollywood Park that includes the stadium, apartments, theaters, offices, shops and restaurants.

A luxury hotel is under construction there, and more development including a grocery store and medical offices is being considered.

Kroenke’s organization hopes that attention from the Olympics will boost Hollywood Park Studios’ appeal as a future entertainment production center.

“We want it to be recognized around the world,” said Alan Bornstein, who is overseeing development of the studio for Kroenke.

The studio is part of Hollywood Park’s master development plan focusing on media, entertainment and technology, Bornstein said, anchored by SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater and the NFL Media office building.

“There has been an increasing convergence of media and technology and sports, all under the notion of entertainment that is now distributed in in multiple channels,” Bornstein said, “whether it’s through streaming or whether through broadcast television or movies in theaters,”

The first phase of Hollywood Park Studios will occupy 12 acres and will consist of five soundstages, each 18,000 square feet, two of which may be opened to a single 36,000-square-foot stage.

The complex will have a three-story, 80,000-square-foot office building to support stage, production and postproduction activities. The studios will have a dedicated open base camp where trucks, equipment and actors’ trailers could be placed, along with a parking structure for 1,100 cars. Future development could include as many as 20 stages and 200,000 square feet of related office space.

The additional stages would be built to suit for future tenants as demand emerges, Bornstein said, who declined to estimate how much the studio complex will cost.

Although demand for soundstages outstripped supply a few years ago, production has recently slowed and dampened the current need for them.

A rendering of the Hollywood Park Studios broadcast center and movie production facility.

(Gensler)

Last year, the average annual occupancy rate dropped to 63%, a further indication of Hollywood’s sustained production slowdown, according to a recent report by FilmLA, a nonprofit organization that tracks on-location shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles area.

That was a decline from 2023, which saw an average regional occupancy rate of 69%. That was the year when dual strikes by writers and actors crippled the local production economy for months.

The foray into Hollywood-level production facilities is part of Kroenke’s goal to combine sports, entertainment and media from around the world, Bornstein said.

In addition to the Rams, Kroenke is owner of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Colorado Avalanche hockey team, the Colorado Rapids soccer team, the Colorado Mammoth lacrosse team and Arsenal Football Club, the Premier League soccer team based in London.

SoFi Stadium, where the Chargers also play football, will be converted into the largest Olympic swimming venue in history during the Games in 2028. It will host the Olympic opening ceremony with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, as well as the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games.

Kroenke is also a major real estate developer and landlord. The 300-acre Hollywood Park project is one of the largest mixed-use developments under construction in the western United States. SoFi Stadium alone cost $5 billion to build.

Last month, he also unveiled plans for a new Rams headquarters on a 100-acre site at Warner Center in Woodland Hills that would include a residential and retail community intended to be the centerpiece of the San Fernando Valley. It could cost more than the total price of Hollywood Park, which has been valued by outside observers at more than $10 billion.

Creating a second epicenter in Woodland Hills allows the Rams to significantly increase the size of their footprint in the Southern California market.

“When you’re looking to do a practice facility, you don’t need to be right in the middle of everything, and typically that real estate is very expensive,” Kroenke told The Times. “We built an identity in the Valley, with Cal Lutheran, and a lot of our players and families are up there. Our experience was really good.”

Architecture firm Gensler spearheaded the design for the Warner Center headquarters and Hollywood Park Studios. Clayco will be the general contractor for the studio, with Pacific Edge acting as project manager. Financing was arranged by Guggenheim Investments.

Times staff writer Sam Farmer contributed to this report.