September 18, 2025 • 12 mins
A thousand people have asked me about the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel on ABC-TV. I don't like it but I understand the business of media. ABC/Disney weighs countless moneymaking opportunities and sheds content that does not produce profits.
Once Nexstar and Sinclair pulled Kimmel's show after he made caustic comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, ABC/Disney had a business decision to make.
Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, and other television operators have to seek approval from the Federal Communications Commission on license renewals, station ownership clustering, and duopoly opportunities.
The public owns the airwaves. The government has control.
Streamers, cable, and a plethora of alternate messaging companies have much less scrutiny than do over-the-air broadcasters.
Jimmy Kimmel's voice isn't silenced from the public, only from ABC broadcast television. He can say whatever he wants on podcasts, social media, or start his own digital platform.
Stephen Colbert's CBS contract is not being renewed but he's on the air every night punching Donald Trump and all other conservatives in the face. Trump didn't get Colbert "removed" from TV, he's still on the air on CBS until the completion of his contract term.
ABC has the ultimate decision of whether to bring Kimmel back and/or renew his contract next year. It's all about business. Either he's worth the risk to earn profits or he's not.
Once Nexstar and Sinclair pulled Kimmel's show after he made caustic comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, ABC/Disney had a business decision to make.
Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, and other television operators have to seek approval from the Federal Communications Commission on license renewals, station ownership clustering, and duopoly opportunities.
The public owns the airwaves. The government has control.
Streamers, cable, and a plethora of alternate messaging companies have much less scrutiny than do over-the-air broadcasters.
Jimmy Kimmel's voice isn't silenced from the public, only from ABC broadcast television. He can say whatever he wants on podcasts, social media, or start his own digital platform.
Stephen Colbert's CBS contract is not being renewed but he's on the air every night punching Donald Trump and all other conservatives in the face. Trump didn't get Colbert "removed" from TV, he's still on the air on CBS until the completion of his contract term.
ABC has the ultimate decision of whether to bring Kimmel back and/or renew his contract next year. It's all about business. Either he's worth the risk to earn profits or he's not.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, on to the topic from Hollywood. It's Jimmy kim
on by Oh my god. I have had a thousand
people ask me how I feel about the Jimmy Kimmel situation,
and really, you know, I don't. It makes me uncomfortable.
I'm a person who talks live on the air. It's
(00:23):
walking a tightrope every day. Have I ever cursed in
my life? Yes, I can't do that on the radio.
I hope I wouldn't. Actually said the S word on
this station one time. That's when I wrecked the station van.
I was on live. That really happened, John, That's crazy.
There's a snow day. I had our remote van at
(00:46):
that time. It had a housing on the top of
it that had the antenna system in it. And I'm
driving along looking for a place where I'm going to
park because I'm going to sled with my kids down
the hill that I lived. I lived on a street
Hawthorne Hill, literally a hill, but in order to get
the broadcast equipment close to it, I had to go
(01:06):
through the Medical Arts Center on Eastern Parkway, and it
has a pedway, you know, a walkover thing overhead. And
so I'm driving along with the r whas fan and
I'm talking live because you know that's it's set up
that way. Yeah, we're bye bye, blah blah blah. Now
here's our helicopter traffic report, and here's Ron robertson whatever
(01:26):
I said. And then all of a sudden, boom, it
hit that over the housing above the van, hit the
walkway that was over my head.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And I'm sure you're your reaction accidentally dropping the s bomb.
That was just a reflesh.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
What happened. A big hunk of fiberglass fell down onto
the windshield and I said, holy sh And I said
that I said that on the radio, and we didn't
get fined for it. But for a while, every time
I went somewhere, someone said, how holy was that? Radio?
The FCC controls over the air broadcast. Governor Brown and
(02:06):
I were just talking about this a few minutes ago.
So we have to limit ourselves in certain ways. It's
based on community standards. That's the phrase. It's an open phrase,
but it's one that's applied to us. There's another phrase
called safe harbor, which is late night ten pm. John.
(02:27):
You know all this from doing training, yes, where more
aggressive forms of speech are allowed in the safe harbor period.
So we all go through training. In fact, I think
close a business today is the last day of us
correct our current training? Did you do yours? I did
it before the show started. Okay, good, we all have
to acknowledge that. We understand. But but but but up
(02:51):
you know, all these things they go there. We are
to take you, John twenty five minutes, half an hour
too long? Not too long. But that's the training, and
it's but it's I'm just letting the listeners know. It's
not just do you understand an curse on the radio?
Check here? It's not like that. We go through all
these different dimensions of ways that we could unknowingly, unwittingly
(03:11):
violate rules. We don't want to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And back during the example that you talked about, was
this before there was a dump button? Were they not
able to dump you accidentally saying the expletive over the radio? Uh?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You know, that's a good question. It would have. My
kids were born in the late eighties. Uh, I'd say
it was the early nineties then when this happened, they
were probably seven and five whatever at that time. So yeah,
surely we had a delay button. Is that what you're talking.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
About Yeah, yeah, I can avoid it going over the air.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's got on the air anyway, I plead guilty your honor.
Statute of limitations has now expired for sure. Anyway, we
all have to sign off on training every year that
says we understand them. That's how that goes. Now, on
a show like Jimmy Kimmel, it's taped, he's not live.
(04:04):
I'm speaking to you at this moment three forty two
pm and seventeen seconds. That's what happens is when we're
on live. What John alluded to is we do have
a control mechanism that can wipe out something in case
a guest says something that's like hey, we can't say that,
and it wipes out the audio and then starts repackaging
(04:25):
and rebuilding the audio, which is an issue because we
also train our people. If that happens, turn off the
violator's microphone so they don't do it again while we're
padding another bridge and the you know, that's that's just
another thing that goes on. But the bottom line is
(04:45):
be a grown up. You know, act You're not a
twelve year old boy talking at middle school. I mean,
it's like, come on, act like a grown up. That's
the bottom line on all that for Jimmy Kimmel. People
losing their minds about oh my god, Trump this, But well,
the number one example of how this that's not true,
(05:09):
that the administration is taking this guy off the air
is that Stephen Colbert is still on the air. How
dumb are you to not understand that Stephen Colbert bashes
Trump in the face every night on the airwaves, the
FCC controlled airwaves. But he's still on the air. H Yeah,
(05:31):
they're not renewing his contract. Excuse me. See we are live.
If you run a bit, excuse me. If you run
a business, you have to make money. You can't just
keep throwing money in a hole over and over and
over again and then and then lose money and then
(05:55):
the business can't be sustained that way. All of these
shows are about trying to make a living, trying to
make profits proceeds. I don't have any idea what Jimmy
Kimmel's costs production costs are, but that's something that Disney's
really assessing that take him off the air as a
gesture over the Charlie Kirk outrage. Because there are lot
(06:18):
of people outrage. He did make a dumb comment about
he said it was one of them who did it,
and it turns out he's wrong. And I know Donald
Trump earlier today said something in England about how Kimmel
said something awful about Charlie Kirk. He may have at
some time or another. I haven't heard that clip. But
this thing that everybody keeps running online is really making
(06:39):
fun of Trump's supporters out looking for the killer of
Charlie Kirk and saying it was really just one of
them the whole time. All turns out the shooters not.
So you're wrong on that front, Kimmel. But the bottom
line is Next Star owns a lot of TV stations.
Sin Clair owns a lot of TV stations. Gray Television
(07:01):
owns a lot of TV stations. That's really turning into
a three horse race in terms of who's going to
control all these TV signals. You all know in Louisville,
Gray Television owns Wave they recently bought or they're in
the process of buying Block Communications, which is WDRB and BKI,
(07:22):
And so that would mean that Gray Television controls NBC
and Fox in this Louisville market. Well, you couldn't do
that before. But a judge made a ruling several months
ago that a duopoly is legal, so that is okay.
Now it's been green lighted. The sale isn't complete yet.
Next Star is buying Tegna, which owns whas eleven. Next
(07:43):
Star is building itself up, Gray is building itself up bigger.
Sinclair is already huge. When Nextstar and sin Clair said
we are not going to run Jimmy Kimmel's show, We're
going to put something else on, guess what happens. It's
a hymn jing of money proceeds to ABCTV, and that's
(08:04):
what it is. That's the driver of everything. If suddenly,
I'll just make this up. Let's say a commercial on
Jimmy Kimmel's show nationwide is and this is a dumb number.
Let's just say one hundred thousand dollars. Well, if you
lose sixty five cities and now you're only on in
(08:25):
twenty two, it isn't worth one hundred thousand dollars. The
value is eighteen thousand, fifty. I don't know, I'm just
making up numbers, but that's the point I'm trying to
drive home. It's driven on whether or not advertisers will
spend a certain amount of money to be on a show.
(08:45):
Johnny Carson used to have forty million viewers. Colbert is
the leader in late night now and he's got one
point seven. I mean, it's just that's as how it is.
It's a different universe. There's so many other places for
people to go to get streaming messages. Is YouTube TV
this or that or whatever and all these other voices
that are out there that has splintered the network universe.
(09:07):
That's why it's all been melting down. The value of
commercials on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers,
all those guys that kicked Trump in the face every night.
The value of the commercials isn't what it was before.
So how much does it cost to put on a show?
Are we making more than that so that we have
(09:27):
a profit And there's our decision. So when next Star
and Sinclair made the decision about pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show
because of offended viewers over the Charlie Kirk assassination, comments
that devalues the product drastically. You own a store you're
selling something for one hundred dollars and it devalues to
(09:48):
five dollars. You got a problem. So that's the baseline
of this story. Freedom of speech, the First Amendment, is important.
Jimmy Hey Kimmel can do a podcast and do whatever
he wants and say and bash on Trump all he wants.
The question is does Disney make money off having Jimmy
(10:10):
Kimmel on? If sixty to seventy percent of the stations
that run the Jimmy Kimmel Show decide they'll put the
Midnight Movie on instead, that's the issue. Do we have
to go through the list of people who've been canceled?
Jimmy Kimmel's not the first Arson Good Goods, Oh my god.
You ever heard of Roseanne bar She was fired by Disney.
(10:33):
Remember she said some racist thing and a dumb tweet
or something other gone. Megan Kelly fired by NBC. She
said something about Halloween costumes and Santa's white or something,
some nonsense. Dave Chappelle, remember the Netflix employees. He's a transphobe.
He made jokes about trans He seems to have made
(10:54):
a living elsewhere. Joe Rogan, remember all those get him
off Spotify Neil Young. I'm taking my tongue w spetefect.
I can go on and Onnres Tucker Carlson fired by Fox.
Jk Rowling, Yeah, I think she's had a little success
in life. People want her dead. After Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
(11:15):
all kinds of open minded people went online to say,
get jk Rowling next, somebody killed Trump, somebody get whoever
Ben Shapiro. I mean, there's a lot of ugliness going
on in this world. But stop making this all about
the First Amendment, because the bottom line is ching, it's
(11:35):
the cash register. Jimmy Kimmel made the comments he wanted
to make with his free speech rights. There are consequences.
He can go make them elsewhere. But if you don't
make money, if Terry Miners doesn't make money for this,
iHeartMedia station, They're gonna have a talking to with me.
(11:56):
That's how that goes. And again we can go on
with all kinds of other people that are canceled. Stop
acting like Jimmy Kimmel is the only person who's been
pushed aside. And we don't even know if it's permanent.
It's indefinite a is what it's listed as now and
Colbert will be on tonight bashing Trump. Welcome to America.
Okay, on to the topic from Hollywood. It's Jimmy kim
on by Oh my god. I have had a thousand
people ask me how I feel about the Jimmy Kimmel situation,
and really, you know, I don't. It makes me uncomfortable.
I'm a person who talks live on the air. It's
(00:23):
walking a tightrope every day. Have I ever cursed in
my life? Yes, I can't do that on the radio.
I hope I wouldn't. Actually said the S word on
this station one time. That's when I wrecked the station van.
I was on live. That really happened, John, That's crazy.
There's a snow day. I had our remote van at
(00:46):
that time. It had a housing on the top of
it that had the antenna system in it. And I'm
driving along looking for a place where I'm going to
park because I'm going to sled with my kids down
the hill that I lived. I lived on a street
Hawthorne Hill, literally a hill, but in order to get
the broadcast equipment close to it, I had to go
(01:06):
through the Medical Arts Center on Eastern Parkway, and it
has a pedway, you know, a walkover thing overhead. And
so I'm driving along with the r whas fan and
I'm talking live because you know that's it's set up
that way. Yeah, we're bye bye, blah blah blah. Now
here's our helicopter traffic report, and here's Ron robertson whatever
(01:26):
I said. And then all of a sudden, boom, it
hit that over the housing above the van, hit the
walkway that was over my head.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And I'm sure you're your reaction accidentally dropping the s bomb.
That was just a reflesh.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
What happened. A big hunk of fiberglass fell down onto
the windshield and I said, holy sh And I said
that I said that on the radio, and we didn't
get fined for it. But for a while, every time
I went somewhere, someone said, how holy was that? Radio?
The FCC controls over the air broadcast. Governor Brown and
(02:06):
I were just talking about this a few minutes ago.
So we have to limit ourselves in certain ways. It's
based on community standards. That's the phrase. It's an open phrase,
but it's one that's applied to us. There's another phrase
called safe harbor, which is late night ten pm. John.
(02:27):
You know all this from doing training, yes, where more
aggressive forms of speech are allowed in the safe harbor period.
So we all go through training. In fact, I think
close a business today is the last day of us
correct our current training? Did you do yours? I did
it before the show started. Okay, good, we all have
to acknowledge that. We understand. But but but but up
(02:51):
you know, all these things they go there. We are
to take you, John twenty five minutes, half an hour
too long? Not too long. But that's the training, and
it's but it's I'm just letting the listeners know. It's
not just do you understand an curse on the radio?
Check here? It's not like that. We go through all
these different dimensions of ways that we could unknowingly, unwittingly
(03:11):
violate rules. We don't want to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And back during the example that you talked about, was
this before there was a dump button? Were they not
able to dump you accidentally saying the expletive over the radio? Uh?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You know, that's a good question. It would have. My
kids were born in the late eighties. Uh, I'd say
it was the early nineties then when this happened, they
were probably seven and five whatever at that time. So yeah,
surely we had a delay button. Is that what you're talking.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
About Yeah, yeah, I can avoid it going over the air.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's got on the air anyway, I plead guilty your honor.
Statute of limitations has now expired for sure. Anyway, we
all have to sign off on training every year that
says we understand them. That's how that goes. Now, on
a show like Jimmy Kimmel, it's taped, he's not live.
(04:04):
I'm speaking to you at this moment three forty two
pm and seventeen seconds. That's what happens is when we're
on live. What John alluded to is we do have
a control mechanism that can wipe out something in case
a guest says something that's like hey, we can't say that,
and it wipes out the audio and then starts repackaging
(04:25):
and rebuilding the audio, which is an issue because we
also train our people. If that happens, turn off the
violator's microphone so they don't do it again while we're
padding another bridge and the you know, that's that's just
another thing that goes on. But the bottom line is
(04:45):
be a grown up. You know, act You're not a
twelve year old boy talking at middle school. I mean,
it's like, come on, act like a grown up. That's
the bottom line on all that for Jimmy Kimmel. People
losing their minds about oh my god, Trump this, But well,
the number one example of how this that's not true,
(05:09):
that the administration is taking this guy off the air
is that Stephen Colbert is still on the air. How
dumb are you to not understand that Stephen Colbert bashes
Trump in the face every night on the airwaves, the
FCC controlled airwaves. But he's still on the air. H Yeah,
(05:31):
they're not renewing his contract. Excuse me. See we are live.
If you run a bit, excuse me. If you run
a business, you have to make money. You can't just
keep throwing money in a hole over and over and
over again and then and then lose money and then
(05:55):
the business can't be sustained that way. All of these
shows are about trying to make a living, trying to
make profits proceeds. I don't have any idea what Jimmy
Kimmel's costs production costs are, but that's something that Disney's
really assessing that take him off the air as a
gesture over the Charlie Kirk outrage. Because there are lot
(06:18):
of people outrage. He did make a dumb comment about
he said it was one of them who did it,
and it turns out he's wrong. And I know Donald
Trump earlier today said something in England about how Kimmel
said something awful about Charlie Kirk. He may have at
some time or another. I haven't heard that clip. But
this thing that everybody keeps running online is really making
(06:39):
fun of Trump's supporters out looking for the killer of
Charlie Kirk and saying it was really just one of
them the whole time. All turns out the shooters not.
So you're wrong on that front, Kimmel. But the bottom
line is Next Star owns a lot of TV stations.
Sin Clair owns a lot of TV stations. Gray Television
(07:01):
owns a lot of TV stations. That's really turning into
a three horse race in terms of who's going to
control all these TV signals. You all know in Louisville,
Gray Television owns Wave they recently bought or they're in
the process of buying Block Communications, which is WDRB and BKI,
(07:22):
And so that would mean that Gray Television controls NBC
and Fox in this Louisville market. Well, you couldn't do
that before. But a judge made a ruling several months
ago that a duopoly is legal, so that is okay.
Now it's been green lighted. The sale isn't complete yet.
Next Star is buying Tegna, which owns whas eleven. Next
(07:43):
Star is building itself up, Gray is building itself up bigger.
Sinclair is already huge. When Nextstar and sin Clair said
we are not going to run Jimmy Kimmel's show, We're
going to put something else on, guess what happens. It's
a hymn jing of money proceeds to ABCTV, and that's
(08:04):
what it is. That's the driver of everything. If suddenly,
I'll just make this up. Let's say a commercial on
Jimmy Kimmel's show nationwide is and this is a dumb number.
Let's just say one hundred thousand dollars. Well, if you
lose sixty five cities and now you're only on in
(08:25):
twenty two, it isn't worth one hundred thousand dollars. The
value is eighteen thousand, fifty. I don't know, I'm just
making up numbers, but that's the point I'm trying to
drive home. It's driven on whether or not advertisers will
spend a certain amount of money to be on a show.
(08:45):
Johnny Carson used to have forty million viewers. Colbert is
the leader in late night now and he's got one
point seven. I mean, it's just that's as how it is.
It's a different universe. There's so many other places for
people to go to get streaming messages. Is YouTube TV
this or that or whatever and all these other voices
that are out there that has splintered the network universe.
(09:07):
That's why it's all been melting down. The value of
commercials on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers,
all those guys that kicked Trump in the face every night.
The value of the commercials isn't what it was before.
So how much does it cost to put on a show?
Are we making more than that so that we have
(09:27):
a profit And there's our decision. So when next Star
and Sinclair made the decision about pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show
because of offended viewers over the Charlie Kirk assassination, comments
that devalues the product drastically. You own a store you're
selling something for one hundred dollars and it devalues to
(09:48):
five dollars. You got a problem. So that's the baseline
of this story. Freedom of speech, the First Amendment, is important.
Jimmy Hey Kimmel can do a podcast and do whatever
he wants and say and bash on Trump all he wants.
The question is does Disney make money off having Jimmy
(10:10):
Kimmel on? If sixty to seventy percent of the stations
that run the Jimmy Kimmel Show decide they'll put the
Midnight Movie on instead, that's the issue. Do we have
to go through the list of people who've been canceled?
Jimmy Kimmel's not the first Arson Good Goods, Oh my god.
You ever heard of Roseanne bar She was fired by Disney.
(10:33):
Remember she said some racist thing and a dumb tweet
or something other gone. Megan Kelly fired by NBC. She
said something about Halloween costumes and Santa's white or something,
some nonsense. Dave Chappelle, remember the Netflix employees. He's a transphobe.
He made jokes about trans He seems to have made
(10:54):
a living elsewhere. Joe Rogan, remember all those get him
off Spotify Neil Young. I'm taking my tongue w spetefect.
I can go on and Onnres Tucker Carlson fired by Fox.
Jk Rowling, Yeah, I think she's had a little success
in life. People want her dead. After Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
(11:15):
all kinds of open minded people went online to say,
get jk Rowling next, somebody killed Trump, somebody get whoever
Ben Shapiro. I mean, there's a lot of ugliness going
on in this world. But stop making this all about
the First Amendment, because the bottom line is ching, it's
(11:35):
the cash register. Jimmy Kimmel made the comments he wanted
to make with his free speech rights. There are consequences.
He can go make them elsewhere. But if you don't
make money, if Terry Miners doesn't make money for this,
iHeartMedia station, They're gonna have a talking to with me.
(11:56):
That's how that goes. And again we can go on
with all kinds of other people that are canceled. Stop
acting like Jimmy Kimmel is the only person who's been
pushed aside. And we don't even know if it's permanent.
It's indefinite a is what it's listed as now and
Colbert will be on tonight bashing Trump. Welcome to America.
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