Canceling the tabs, or letting the tabs cancel themselves ...
They didn’t boot Kimmel when he cheered for the unvaccinated to die or when he cheered for more @Tesla vandalism.
— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) September 18, 2025
He stopped being funny long ago.
And his ratings were plummeting. Yet made $16M/year.
The cultural tide has turned. pic.twitter.com/ztef6ujLW5
Ed: We'll get to the ratings a little later, but yeah, Kimmel's not exactly a paragon of broadcasting virtue when it comes to laissez-faire policies. That doesn't by itself mean that the government should intervene, but his propagandizing and outright lies on the "public trust" of broadcast licenses gets him a lot closer to enforcement actions. In this case, I think the affiliates really did the heavy work in taking him off the air.
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Dynuz: The “Tonight Show” host was set to appear at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival on Thursday morning to discuss his coming NBC reality series, “On Brand.” However, the publication told attendees Thursday that Fallon would no longer be joining moderator Jeff Beer for the panel.
“In light of recent events, Jimmy couldn’t be here,” a spokesperson for Fast Company said to Business Insider.
Ed: Hmmm. Message received?
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Here’s Hakeem Jeffries threatening Fox News, on official letterhead, explicitly demanding they stop airing content he calls “lies” and “propaganda” just two years ago. https://t.co/2TA2pFgEEa pic.twitter.com/Cc9ht01amj
— Payton Alexander (@AlexanderPayton) September 18, 2025
Ed: Duly noted for all progressives experiencing Sudden Libertarian Syndrome. Jeffries didn't threaten specific intervention from the FCC because the FCC does not have any jurisdiction over non-broadcast media. However, this kind of demand from government officials clearly implies an intervention if the demand isn't met.
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Remember when Twitter’s Jack Dorsey banned the President of the United States from the world’s biggest forum during an election?
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 18, 2025
Screw Jimmy Kimmel. pic.twitter.com/H6iNpenWo6
Ed: That was nominally a private-sector decision, but it came at a time when Congress was exerting tremendous pressure on social-media platforms to police "misinformation." This was one of the many poisonous fruits of the Russiagate hoax, and Congress threatened to regulate the platforms and police speech if Dorsey et al didn't act. And in the end, the Biden administration did so anyway by attempting to create a Ministry of Truth-esque "misinformation" agency, then warped the Global Engagement Center for that purpose instead.
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Liz Wolfe at Reason: Some people have made the point that the FCC might have given Disney/ABC cover to do something they already wanted to do, and do it in a way that makes the Trump administration look like the bad guys...
I also think this point is very fair, which is that this didn't start yesterday. If you haven't noticed the extraordinary media jawboning—indirect censorial pressure directed at private companies from the federal government—over the last few years, you haven't been paying much attention ...
Cohn makes a good point, both that this is the direct result of government coercion that is wrong and disturbing, and that these institutions should not be in the business of caving. It's disturbing to see massive law firms, media outlets, and organizations that should have some amount of fuck-you money choose the path of cowardice. But given that Disney has been interested in fighting the government before (albeit in a different context), the fact that they weren't willing to do so this time makes me think maybe Kimmel was already a goner.
Ed: This entire essay is well worth reading from an actual libertarian, rather than a cancel-culture progressive suffering Sudden Libertarian Syndrome. I am sympathetic to her argument that Carr's intervention -- even if only rhetorical in the moment -- offers a dangerous precedent for broadcasters in the future. But like Liz, I think the affiliate response only enabled Disney to take an action they would have done anyway, in a moment when they can paint themselves as victims of Trumpism.
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Jimmy Kimmel did not joke about Charlie Kirk.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 18, 2025
He spread a false and verifiable lie and the network and Disney rightfully freaked out about it. https://t.co/7quFX8OqdJ pic.twitter.com/U6bldpfrvH
Ed: The affiliates freaked out over it; Disney freaked out over the affiliate revolt. That's probably not from big concerns about liability -- the general use of "MAGA-land" isn't going to give anyone standing for a defamation action -- but for the reaction of their viewers in their broadcast areas. Both Sinclair and Nexstar, the two large affiliate groups that pulled Kimmel initially, serve redder-state areas as well as some urban cores.
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The Blaze: Liberal activist organizations, Democrats, and Hollywood script-readers who didn't make a peep when conservatives and populists were canceled in recent years rushed to condemn Kimmel's visitation by consequence, complaining of imagined government censorship and fascism.
The liberal X knockoff Bluesky — where some leftists have celebrated Kirk's assassination — teemed on Wednesday with hysterical hot takes and the mantra, "I stand with Jimmy Kimmel."
Critics cognizant of the great pleasure that Kimmel took in demonizing conservatives and vaccine skeptics and in celebrating their cancellation appear less than sympathetic over his ouster. They certainly aren't buying the line that the liberal host is "some kind of free speech martyr."
'We've still got a lot of pan-dimwits out there.'
Ed: And look how helpful it is to have them self-identify.
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Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get pulled for being “mean to the right” he was pulled because he *knowingly* made a false statement, violating the FCC’s rules (I imagine against defamation), & then refused to issue a statement/apology about it.
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) September 18, 2025
He risked ABC’s license & got put in time out. pic.twitter.com/VAnZCKqzTL
Ed: Again, we can debate whether the FCC should adopt stringent or laissez-faire enforcement policies when reviewing licensees for their adherence to the "public interest." What we need, though, is one standard applied to all, and limited to actual statutory and constitutional jurisdiction. After having survived the Global Engagement Center era, I'm not terribly sympathetic when their application of unconstitutional speech policing get applied where federal jurisdiction actually exists.
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The Free Press: One of the other things Carr said in the interview with Johnson is that many progressives in the media and the Democratic Party have been working nonstop to spin a narrative about the suspected shooter. “In some quarters there is a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature of one of the most significant newsworthy, public interest acts we’ve seen in a long time,” he said.
We don’t disagree. But Carr should know better. In November, he posted on X: “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” Exactly right. He should have more faith in those everyday Americans along with our justice system. We don’t need government commissioners to protect us from hot takes and dumb jokes.
It was bad enough when ABC summarily canceled Roseanne Barr’s show for an off-color tweet about an ex-Obama adviser in 2018. But that decision was not made under the duress of threats from the federal government. ABC just canceled Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the chairman of the FCC threatened the network on a podcast. For the MAGA crowd who might like what they’re seeing from Carr: Remember that Democrats will wield this power again. And when they do, they will play by the new rules that Carr and the Trump administration just established.
Ed: It's a good point. However, they are lecturing about the precedent that the Biden administration created with its "misinformation" policing during the pandemic on forms of speech in which the government has no jurisdiction at all. We've already experienced those consequences. This feels more like forcing the Left to play by the same rules -- which still leaves us with the potential that the editors warn will return.
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"systematically killing free speech." - said, a week after a leftist systematically killed Charlie Kirk - a crime Kimmel deliberately and misleadingly blamed on Kirk's allies and friends.
— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) September 18, 2025
her blind spot is so big, Stelter's fat ass could walk thru it without scraping the walls. https://t.co/V64LdZZsqZ
Ed: If you didn't watch Gutfeld's show last night, check it out. The news apparently broke in the middle of their taping, and the commentary was glorious.
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Variety, 2018: Under these circumstances, the hosts are no longer trying to attain Carson’s status. Simply put, they can’t.
Their success hinges not on winning the most viewers, but on winning the most like-minded ones. That way, the networks can position themselves with advertisers as winning the youngest men, the most women, the most people between 18 and 34, et cetera. Samantha Bee likely doesn’t feel the need to broaden the show’s audience to people who might support Trump because the business power of her “Full Frontal” program on TBS comes from its ability to carve out a niche distinctive from what the other programs can command. That swath of die-hards then follows her brand of content through linear broadcasts, sure, but also on Medium, Twitter and other places where her humor and sensibility can thrive.
“Are these shows supposed to reach the broadest possible audiences? That’s a real Johnny Carson-era assumption about late-night, that the goal is to reach the largest, most non-denominational audience you possibly can,” says Geoffrey Baym, author of the 2006 book “From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News” and chair of the Department of Media Studies at Temple University. “I’m not sure that’s the way the genre works now.” The various hosts “might turn away a potential viewer, but they are doubling down on their appeal for a particular audience.”
Ed: How well did that work out? See below.
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3 left wing hosts destroyed late night tv pic.twitter.com/53982ZK6y2
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) September 18, 2025
Ed: Even accepting the post-Carson competitive environment, the genre essentially destroyed itself with this strategy. The only successful show during this period is Gutfeld's, in large part because it's the only show that didn't exclude viewers anywhere to the right of Antifa. It's also a different format -- it's a panel show, which is much cheaper to produce and far more interesting in content. The problem here is that the three left-wing hosts all pursued the same fringe audience, and their networks allowed it rather than offering differing points of view.
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Babylon Bee: "We're replacing Jimmy with someone talented and popular," Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly said in a closed-door meeting. "We're going to pretend that we're being forced to do it by the government, but we're just happy to have a reason to make a switch. And once we heard that JD Vance was available, we knew we had to do it. JD is more likable than Jimmy, he's funnier than Jimmy, and he's even got a better beard. There's no comparison."
After the news was confirmed, Vice President Vance issued a statement. "I'm happy to take over," he said. "After guest-hosting Charlie's show the other day, I realized I have a knack for this hosting thing. Doing a late-night talk show can't be that hard, right? You put on a suit, you tell a few jokes, you ask celebrities questions and pretend to be interested in their answers. It's pretty much the same as attending a state dinner with the prime minister of Japan, really."
Ed: Hey, J.D. got some practice this week on Charlie Kirk's show. He's tanned, rested, and ready!
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