\n<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Tuesday night, viewers in more than 60 U.S. markets couldn\u2019t watch \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d \u2014 his first show back after a weeklong suspension by Disney \u2014 on their local ABC stations. The Kimmel boycotts by two big TV station groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, clearly drove many fans in those areas to watch his monologue on YouTube, where ABC posted it shortly after midnight ET. It quickly became the show\u2019s most-viewed video on the platform so far in 2025.<\/p>\n
\n\tOstensibly, Sinclair and Nexstar are refusing to air \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d in protest of comments Kimmel made last week about Charlie Kirk\u2019s killer. (Sinclair and Nexstar aired news programming on their ABC stations in the late-night timeslot instead.) There\u2019s this much-discussed plotline: FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who wants to promote local TV stations\u2019 efforts to push back on liberal-leaning programming, suggested the agency would pursue investigations into \u201cnews distortion\u201d complaints against Kimmel\u2019s show and, in not so many words, cause the FCC to make life difficult for them. Critics cried foul \u2014 accusing Carr of attempting to thwart speech he and the Trump administration don\u2019t like. Nexstar and Sinclair both want to FCC to lift the 39% TV station ownership cap rule, with Nexstar\u2019s $6.2 billion proposed Tegna takeover requiring FCC approval and a change to the ownership cap. Ergo, the assumption is those companies want to get in Carr\u2019s good graces.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhatever the motivations for Sinclair and Nexstar, the question now is: When will they bring back \u201cKimmel\u201d (if ever) to their stations? And who has more to lose \u2014 Disney and ABC, or Sinclair and Nexstar?<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Wednesday, Nexstar said that it is \u201ccontinuing to evaluate the status of \u2018Jimmy Kimmel Live!\u2019\u00a0on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so.\u00a0We are engaged in productive discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor now, it\u2019s unclear how long \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d will be off the air on Sinclair\u2019s 38 ABC affiliates and Nexstar\u2019s 28 ABC stations. Reps for Sinclair did not respond to requests for comment, and Nexstar isn\u2019t saying what might happen beyond Wednesday. A Disney spokesperson declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut the financial impact on Disney, Nexstar and Sinclair would be \u201cnegligible,\u201d even if the Kimmel blackout by the station groups stretched on for a year, according to Matt Dolgin, senior equity analyst at Wall Street research firm Morningstar.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBottom line, Disney would be out only a few million dollars\u201d if the two station groups, which represent about 25% of the U.S. TV audience, preempted \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d for the next 12 months, according to Dolgin. For the media giant ($91.4 billion in revenue for fiscal 2024) it\u2019s barely a rounding error. Dolgin estimates that Nexstar and Sinclair collectively get less than $10 million in ad revenue annually from \u201cKimmel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cDisney will be fine either way. For that reason, I don\u2019t expect the station owners will push this too far,\u201d says Dolgin. \u201cFar more important is the relationship between Disney and these station owners, and, to me, Disney holds all the leverage.\u201d The analyst notes that both station groups have affiliate agreements with Disney expiring in 2026, \u201cand it\u2019s critical for the station owners to renew. This is far more important than current monetary impact of preemptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe risk for the station groups with a prolonged blackout of Kimmel\u2019s show \u201cis that people would be ticked off because they would want to see Kimmel, or in the larger sense ticked off because that kind of specific blocking of content speaks to First Amendment rights,\u201d says Prof. Danilo Yanich of the University of Delaware, a professor of public policy and administration whose research focuses on the media industry.<\/p>\n
\n\tPushback by viewers in Sinclair and Nexstar\u2019s ABC markets, and the perception that they\u2019re kowtowing to the FCC chairman\u2019s anti-liberal ideology, could ultimately cause the companies to relent. \u201cYou have an FCC chair who is functioning in a way we\u2019ve never seen before \u2014 he is openly partisan, saying the FCC\u2019s function is to support the president\u2019s policies,\u201d Yanich says.<\/p>\n
\n\tIf Disney decided to not renew ABC affiliation deals with Sinclair or Nexstar, that would be \u201cthe nuclear option,\u201d Yanich says. A wildcard here is that if the FCC raises or eliminates the 39% ownership cap, that could result in much larger TV stations groups that would have more leverage in talks with Disney. \u201cConsolidation is power. The FCC is poised now to remove broadcast ownership restrictions,\u201d says Yanich.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat said, if relationships with local stations completely fractured \u2014 and Disney opts to not renew the ABC affiliation agreements with Nexstar and Sinclair \u2014 Disney would take a financial hit, but it would \u201cface no existential threat,\u201d according to Dolgin. With its streaming services and cable networks, it could still reach the entire nation with its content. If affiliation agreements with Nexstar and Sinclair are not renewed, Disney could drive more revenue to its streaming services (Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN Unlimited), which could potentially have 100% of ABC programming, helping to offset the already modest impact of any loss of linear television, the analyst adds.<\/p>\n
\n\tSEE ALSO: As Nexstar and Sinclair Take on Disney Over Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC Is Happy \u2014 but Will It Backfire?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Tuesday night, viewers in more than 60 U.S. markets couldn\u2019t watch \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d \u2014 his first show back after a weeklong suspension by Disney \u2014 on their local ABC stations. The Kimmel boycotts by two big TV station groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, clearly drove many fans in those areas to watch his monologue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[14359,235,441,3483,14358,14357],"class_list":{"0":"post-23528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-blackouts","9":"tag-jimmy","10":"tag-kimmel","11":"tag-long","12":"tag-nexstar","13":"tag-sinclair"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}