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Americans watching the late-night circus got a reminder this week that the real fight over culture and power is playing out not just on stages but in our hometown newsrooms. Walt Disney’s ABC quietly announced it would lift the short suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show and put him back on the network schedule, but that decision didn’t make the controversy disappear.
Local broadcasters answered differently than the coastal elites and the corporate bosses in Burbank. Sinclair and Nexstar — owners and operators of roughly a quarter of ABC’s affiliates nationwide — told viewers they would not resume carrying Kimmel’s program and will instead run local news or other programming, shutting the network’s late-night handoff in large swaths of the country. This isn’t a small symbolic protest; it takes Kimmel off the air in more than 70 stations and tens of millions of households.
The showdown was sparked by Kimmel’s comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, remarks ABC called “ill-timed and insensitive” and that triggered the network’s initial suspension. FCC Chair Brendan Carr added fuel to the fire when he publicly warned broadcasters about potential penalties if they aired content he deemed problematic, turning what should have been a corporate discipline matter into a national free-speech crisis.
Good on Sinclair and Nexstar for putting viewers and local standards first instead of reflexively kneeling to Disney’s woke machinery. Sinclair even demanded that Kimmel offer a direct apology to the Kirk family and suggested meaningful restitution — a far more grown-up response than whatever theater was taking place in ABC’s executive suites. Local stations are accountable to their communities, and for once corporate headquarters had to answer to Main Street.
Meanwhile, ABC’s decision to quietly reinstate Kimmel without what many would call real accountability tells you everything you need to know about the cultural rot at Disney. Nexstar’s board, which is awaiting FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, has been explicit that it will continue to monitor the situation — a reminder that regulatory pressure and corporate relationships now dictate what millions of Americans are allowed to watch.
This episode has exposed something dangerous: an unelected regulator’s threats can chill speech when combined with corporate panic. FCC warnings and public praise for station preemptions by agency officials drew bipartisan alarm precisely because they blur the line between rules enforcement and ideological punishment. Conservatives should not be timid about calling this out; when the government and media conglomerates coordinate to silence dissenting voices, liberty loses.
If you care about free expression and honest local journalism, now is the time to stand with the stations that refused to roll over. Demand transparency from ABC and Disney about what concessions, if any, were made to bring Kimmel back, support your local broadcasters that kept their promise to viewers, and remember that streaming alternatives don’t replace the role of hometown newsrooms that still answer to the people, not the powers that be.
