Nexstar

Jimmy Kimmel figured his ABC late-night show was toast during last month’s firestorm over his comments following conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting.

“I said to my wife: ‘That’s it. It’s over,’” Kimmel recalled Wednesday night at the Bloomberg Screentime media conference in Hollywood in a lengthy sit-down interview three weeks after the controversy.

The 57-year-old comedian has all along felt his statements about the Kirk shooting were misconstrued. But he recognized his show was in deep trouble on Sept. 17 when his bosses benched him and two ABC affiliate station owners, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group, initially refused to air the program.

Kimmel provided fresh details about his dealings with Walt Disney Co. brass, his emotional hiatus and the late night television business in the wake of rival CBS announcing it was canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” next spring.

Kimmel declined to say whether he would extend his long ABC run when his contract is up in May, but he acknowledged an interest in producing other projects.

Kimmel’s future was in doubt last month after his comments and the political backlash spawned boisterous protests that shined a light on 1st Amendment freedoms, the role of the Federal Communications Commission and the challenges facing Disney as it looks for a new leader to replace Chief Executive Bob Iger next year.

The controversy began with his Sept. 15 monologue when Kimmel said Trump supporters “are 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.” Right-wing influencers howled; FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s actions “the sickest conduct possible.”

The sentiment he was trying to convey “was intentionally, and I think maliciously, mischaracterized,” Kimmel said.

He didn’t sense the initial fallout was “a big problem,” but rather a “distortion on the part of some of the right-wing media networks,” he said.

Kimmel had planned to clarify his remarks Sept. 17, but Disney executives feared the comedian was dug in and would only inflame the tense situation. That night, about an hour before showtime, Disney hit pause and released a statement saying the show had been pre-empted “indefinitely.”

He was off the air for four days.

“I can sometimes be aggressive. I can sometimes be unpleasant,” he said.

A protester calls for the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after Walt Disney Co. yanked the ABC comedian in September over comments he made about the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

He recognized the show’s precarious position when Sinclair and Nexstar bailed. He recalled an episode from early in his career when he made a joke about boisterous Detroit basketball fans, saying “They’re gonna burn the city of Detroit down if the Pistons win,” so he hoped the Lakers would prevail.

The comment riled up the Motor City, prompting the local ABC affiliate to briefly shelve Kimmel’s show.

An ABC executive at the time told Kimmel the loss of the Detroit market could be catastrophic. That pales in comparison to the threatened loss of Nexstar and Sinclair, which own dozens of stations, including in such large markets as Seattle, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

“The idea that I would not have …. 40 affiliates [stations] … I was like, ‘Well, that’s it,’” Kimmel said.

But he said he “was not going to go along” with demands made by station broadcasters.

Sinclair, a right-leaning broadcaster, said in a statement it would not air Kimmel until he issued “a direct apology to the Kirk family” and “make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA,” the right-wing group Kirk founded.

Both Sinclair and Nexstar resumed airing the show Sept. 26. ABC offered no concessions.

Kimmel complimented Disney’s co-chair of entertainment Dana Walden’s handling of the crisis, saying she was instrumental in helping him sort through his emotions.

“I ruined Dana’s weekend. It was just nonstop phone calls all weekend,” Kimmel said, saying he doubted the situation would have turned out so well “if I hadn’t talked to Dana as much as I did, because it helped me think everything through, and it helped me just kind of understand where everyone was coming from.”

When asked who might become the next CEO of Disney, Kimmel said it would be “foolish” to answer that question.

“But I happen to love Dana Walden very much, and I think she’s done a great job,” Kimmel said.

Throughout the controversy, Walden and Iger were skewered by critics who asserted the company was caving to President Trump, who has made it clear that he’s no Kimmel fan. The Disney leaders were accused of “corporate capitulation.”

“What has happened over the last three weeks … was very unfair to my bosses at Disney,” Kimmel said. “It [was] insane, and I hope that we drew a really bold red line as Americans about what we will and will not accept.”

Kimmel returned Sept. 23 with an emotional monologue that championed the 1st Amendment.

Ratings soared.

The controversy — and CBS’ upcoming cancellation of Colbert — has focused new attention on the cultural clout of late night hosts, despite the industry’s falling ratings.

Millions of viewers now watch monologues and other late night gags the following day on YouTube, which means networks that produce the shows have lost valuable revenue because Google controls much of that advertising.

Networks acknowledge the late night block is challenged, but Kimmel said such shows still matter.

He scoffed at reports that cite unnamed sources suggesting Colbert’s show was on track to lose $40 million this year.

“If [CBS] lost $40 million, they would have canceled it already,” Kimmel said. “I know what the budgets for these shows are,” alluding to the ABC, CBS and NBC shows.

“If we’re losing so much money, none of us would be on,” he said. “That’s kind of all you need to know.”

Sept. 23 (UPI) — Nexstar Media Group will not air “Jimmy Kimmel, Live!” and joined the Sinclair Broadcast Group in pre-empting the ABC talk show when it is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.

Nexstar officials announced their decision a day after Sinclair said it also would pre-empt Kimmel’s show due to his falsely claiming the alleged shooter of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a MAGA supporter.

“We made a decision last week to pre-empt ‘Jimmy Kimmel, Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s’ ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” Nexstar officials said in a news release, as reported by NBC News.

“We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”

Nexstar and Sinclair own a combined total of nearly 70 local stations that account for nearly a fourth of ABC stations, according to The New York Times.

Nexstar and Sinclair intend to air news programming instead of Kimmel’s talk show.

Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., wrote a letter to Nexstar Media Group executives that “demands answers” regarding why they are pre-empting “Jimmy Kimmel, Live!” on affiliate stations.

“The public owns the airwaves — not the FCC chairman, not [President] Donald Trump and not Nexstar,” McGovern said Monday in a press release.

“Local TV stations have a responsibility to serve the public interest — not advance political vendettas against those who express opinions the government doesn’t like,” he continued.

“Using the threat of license revocation to strong-arm a network into silencing a comedian is not only corrupt — it’s almost certainly unconstitutional.”

During his opening monologue on Sept. 15, Kimmel said, “The MAGA gang desperately [is] 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.”

ABC and its owner, the Walt Disney Corp., suspended his show indefinitely the next day but announced it would resume Tuesday night.

Television station giant Nexstar Media Group said it will not run “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as the Walt Disney Co. brings the ABC comedian back to television Tuesday night.

Disney on Monday reversed its suspension of the late-night talk show after the host’s comments about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk set off a political firestorm.

Nexstar joins Sinclair Broadcast Group in continuing to keep Kimmel off the air in cities around the country.

“We made a decision last week to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-time and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” Nexstar said in a statement. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”

The two television station groups cover about 25% of television homes, which will diminish the reach of advertisers who buy time in the television program.

Nexstar needs approval of the Federal Communications Commission for its $6.2-billion takeover of Tegna, another large television station group. Last week, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called on ABC to take action.

Nexstar was the first station group to pull Kimmel, prompting Disney to put the show on hiatus.

This is a developing story.

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.

NEW YORK — Two ABC affiliate owners spoke out against late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel ahead of ABC’s decision to suspend the presenter over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Their comments highlight the influence that local TV station owners have on national broadcasters such as Disney-owned ABC.

Here are key facts about the two companies.

Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC affiliates. It said it would pull Kimmel’s show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

The company owns or partners with more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets, and owns broadcast networks the CW and NewsNation, as well as the political website the Hill and nearly a third of the Food Network.

It hopes to get even bigger. Last month, it announced a $6.2-billion deal to buy TEGNA Inc., which owns 64 other TV stations.

The deal would require the Federal Communications Commission to change rules limiting the number of stations a single company can own. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, has expressed openness to changing the rule.

Sinclair Broadcast Group

Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Hunt Valley, Md., operates 38 local ABC affiliates. On Wednesday the company, which has a reputation for a conservative viewpoint in its broadcasts, called on Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to the activist’s political organization, Turning Point USA. Sinclair said its ABC stations will air a tribute to Kirk on Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.

Sinclair owns, operates or provides services to 178 TV stations in 81 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks and owns Tennis Channel.

Controversies

Sinclair made headlines in 2018 when a video that stitched together dozens of news anchors for Sinclair-owned local stations reading identical statements decrying “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing the country” went viral. Sinclair didn’t disclose that it ordered the anchors to read the statement.

Nexstar operates similarly.

Danilo Yanich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, said the company is the “biggest duplicator” of news content today His research showed Nexstar stations duplicated broadcasts more than other affiliate owners.

Affiliate influence

Lauren Herold, an editor of the forthcoming book “Local TV,” said the web of companies involved in getting Americans their television shows is “relatively unknown” to most viewers, though their influence has been made known for decades.

Often, Herold said, that’s been when local affiliates have balked at airing something they viewed as controversial, such as the episode of the 1990s comedy “Ellen” in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character came out as gay.

“It’s not a complete oddity,” Herold said. “I think what’s more alarming about this particular incident to me is the top-down nature of it.”

Whereas past flare-ups between affiliates and their parent networks have often involved individual local TV executives, Herold pointed to the powerful voices at play in Kimmel’s suspension: Disney CEO Bob Iger, the FCC’s chair Carr, as well as Sinclair and Nexstar.

“The FCC kind of pinpointing particular programs to cancel is concerning to people who advocate for television to be a forum for free discussion and debate,” Herold said.

Jasmine Bloemhof, a media strategist who has worked with local stations, including ones owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, said consolidation has given such companies “enormous influence.” Controversies like the latest involving Kimmel, she said, “reveal the tension between Hollywood-driven programming and the values of everyday Americans.”

“Networks may push one agenda, but affiliates owned by companies like Sinclair and Nexstar understand they serve conservative-leaning communities across the country,” Bloemhof said. “And that friction is bound to surface.”

Anderson and Sedensky write for the Associated Press.

On a Wednesday podcast, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said ABC had to act on Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the killing of right wing activist Charlie Kirk. “We can do it the easy way or the hard way,” the Trump appointee told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson.

The intended audience, the owners of ABC stations across the country, heard the message loud and clear. They chose the easy way.

Within hours of Carr’s comments, Nexstar, which controls 32 ABC affiliates, agreed to drop “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.

Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC quickly followed with its own announcement that it was pulling Kimmel from the network. Sinclair Broadcasting, a TV station company long sympathetic to conservative causes, also shelved the show and went a step further by demanding that Kimmel make a financial contribution to Kirk’s family and his conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA.

It is not clear if or when Kimmel’s show will return. On Thursday, high-level ABC executives spoke with Kimmel and his team to see whether there was a way to “bring the temperature down,” allowing the show to return, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment.

The situation reflects the power that Carr has over the companies with outlets that still reach the largest audiences in the U.S., even in the age of streaming. Over-the-air TV and radio stations are the only media licensed by the government due to their use of the public airwaves, and Carr, whose commitment to President Trump is unwavering, holds the keys to their future.

Companies that own TV stations are desperate to make acquisition or merger deals so they can compete with the clout of tech companies. Nexstar, for example, needs the FCC’s permission for a proposed $6.2-billion acquisition of rival station operator Tegna, and other companies are expected to swap and acquire outlets as well. All deals have to get approval of the FCC, which is also being lobbied to lift the cap on how much of the U.S. station owners can cover.

That gives Carr tremendous leverage.

The latest trouble for Kimmel started Monday when he seemed to suggest during his monologue that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are 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.”

Carr, during Johnson’s podcast, called Kimmel’s comments “the sickest conduct possible.” Carr, who has previously styled himself as a free speech absolutist, argues that stations have the right to pull the show if owners believe the content conflicts with community standards.

“Broadcast TV stations have always been required by their licenses to operate in the public interest — that includes serving the needs of their local communities,” he wrote Thursday on X. “And broadcasters have long retained the right to not air national programs that they believe are inconsistent with the public interest, including their local communities’ values. I am glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”

Kimmel’s staff was told not to report to work Thursday but has been given no information about the program’s future. Kimmel has yet to comment.

Top Disney executives, including Chief Executive Bob Iger — who has a close relationship with the host — and Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, made the decision to bench Kimmel.

Disney executives had been huddling as the crisis mounted throughout Wednesday and Kimmel and his staff had been preparing the show. The comedian planned to address the situation, according to three people close to the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Some Disney execs were belatedly uncomfortable with Kimmel’s monologue, which became a lightning rod for conservatives on social media. Walden spoke with Kimmel on Wednesday, one of the knowledgeable sources said, and she and other executives became concerned that Kimmel’s planned remarks were “pretty emotional” and “did not strike the right tone.”

With only about an hour before the show was set to begin taping, the ABC executives felt they did not have time to work out an appropriate response and decided to suspend the show rather than risk an escalation of the cultural tensions, one of the sources said.

The call to dump Kimmel by Nexstar, whose founder and CEO Perry Sook has praised the administration and said lifting station ownership restrictions was the company’s top priority, put pressure on Disney to act because of the number of affiliate stations it owns.

Losing Kimmel would be a major blow to ABC.

While late-night ratings are in decline and profits on his show have greatly diminished, Kimmel is a recognizable personality who is strongly identified with the network. He has emceed the Emmys and the Oscars, and hosted game shows in addition to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He’s also the current host of ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” After years of ABC being a non-entity in late-night TV, Kimmel put the network in the game when he arrived in 2003 after hosting popular shows on Comedy Central.

Trump and Kimmel have long sparred. Tensions date back to 2017, when Trump first moved into the White House and Kimmel poked fun at the new president from the Oscars stage. The comedian’s position on Trump hardened, and grew more personal, later that year after he and his wife nearly lost their infant son who was born with a rare heart condition.

Kimmel then advocated for the preservation of the Affordable Care Act, which had been a Trump target. The rift widened last year at the Oscars when Trump posted a harsh review of Kimmel on Truth Social in real time, asking whether there had ever been a worse emcee.

Kimmel read the post during the telecast, then looked at the camera and said: “Thank you for watching. I’m surprised you’re still — isn’t it past your jail time?” Since then Trump has called for Kimmel’s cancellation.

Trump has long been comedic fodder for late-night hosts, and now he is exacting his revenge with Carr’s help. He called for the firing of Stephen Colbert ahead of CBS’ decision to cancel his program, “The Late Show,” for financial reasons. That decision came after Colbert blasted parent company Paramount’s decision to pay $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit — a move he and many others speculated was made to get FCC approval of its merger deal with Skydance Media.

Trump has also gone after NBC’s late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, saying they should be next on the chopping block.

The chilling effect is already evident on ABC. “The View,” the network’s daytime talk program that airs live and regularly skewers Trump, made no mention of the Kimmel controversy on Thursday. The story was covered briefly on the network’s “Good Morning America.”

Prominent writer-producer Damon Lindelof (a creator of ABC’s hit drama “Lost” and HBO’s “The Leftovers”) posted on Instagram that he was “shocked, saddened and infuriated” by Kimmel’s suspension. Lindelof wrote he could not “in good conscience work” for Disney if the company failed to bring Kimmel back.

Disney’s action was quickly condemned by Hollywood unions, progressive groups, free speech organizations and Democratic politicians.

“The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other — to disturb, even — is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people,” the Writers Guild of America West and East chapters said in a statement. “It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”

“If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution,” the writers group said. “Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.”

Tino Gagliardi, international president of the American Federation of Musicians, which includes members of Kimmel’s band, added: “This is not complicated. Trump’s FCC identified speech it did not like and threatened ABC with extreme reprisals. This is state censorship.”

Four prominent unions, including Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, issued a joint statement saying that the removal of Kimmel “under government pressure” has added further uncertainty to the Hollywood workforce, which already has been reeling from a cutback in film and television production.

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democrat on the three-member panel, said the agency “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.” Gomez also was sharply critical of Disney, calling out what she called as “cowardly corporate capitulation.”

Disney has not commented beyond its initial announcement.

Gomez referenced an incident earlier in the week, when Trump threatened ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl after the president bristled over a question Karl asked about a crackdown on free speech. Trump said Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi might “go after” the reporter “because you treat me so unfairly.”

“We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control,” Gomez said.

Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster ABC said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely following backlash over the host’s remarks about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The move comes after station owner Nexstar Media Group said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from its ABC affiliate stations as a result of the comments.

The Irving, Texas-based Nexstar announced Wednesday that Kimmel will be off its stations for the foreseeable future.

“Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets,” a company representative said in a statement.

Kimmel said during a monologue on his Monday program that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are 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 then mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was reacting to the murder of his close ally.

“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

Alford said continuing to give Kimmel a broadcast platform “is simply not in the public interest at this current time.”

Nexstar’s decision comes just after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC. Appearing on the podcast of right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said one form of punishment could be pulling the licenses of ABC affiliates, which likely got Nexstar’s attention.

Nexstar has ABC affiliates in 32 markets across the U.S., including in New Orleans, New Haven, Nashville and Salt Lake City.

Network affiliates dropping a late-night program over the political views expressed in it is unprecedented. The closest situation goes back to 1970, when CBS blacked out the image of activist Abbie Hoffman when he appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” wearing a shirt made out of an American flag.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — Nexstar Media announced it will purchase Tegna, the broadcast arm of Gannett.

The announcement said Nexstar will buy all outstanding shares of Tegna for $22 per share in a cash transaction valued at $6.2 billion. It includes all of Tegna’s net debt.

The price is a 31% premium to Tegna’s 30-day average stock price.

“Following completion of the transaction, the combined entity will be a leading local media company, well-positioned to compete in today’s fragmented and rapidly evolving marketplace,” the press release said. “The new company will be better able to serve communities by ensuring the long-term vitality of local news and programming from trusted local sources and preserving the diversity of local voice and opinion. Nexstar will also be able to provide advertisers with an even greater variety of competitive local and national broadcast and digital advertising solutions to serve brands and consumers more effectively.”

Tegna is headquartered in Tysons, Va., and was formed in 2015 when Gannett split into two publicly traded companies.

Nexstar is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 stations. It also owns WGN Radio in Chicago and operates the CW network and NewsNation (formerly WGN).

The company will have 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, representing 80% of U.S. TV households after the merger.

Public interest groups and many Democrats have expressed concern about allowing a single owner to control so much media in the United States.

Nexstar said the deal is expected to close by the second half of 2026.

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook lauded Trump in the press release.

“The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the Big Tech and legacy Big Media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources. We believe Tegna represents the best option for Nexstar to act on this opportunity,” he said.