Disney: Welcome back, Jimmy Kimmel!
Sinclair: Not so fast ...
The return of Jimmy Kimmel will not be a universal experience, it appears. Not long after Disney announced that they would restart his Jimmy Kimmel Live! tomorrow night, one of ABC's largest affiliate groups balked. Sinclair Broadcasting announced that they would run news programming in that slot instead:
Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming. Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return. pic.twitter.com/beGC6VID2x
— Sinclair, Inc. (@WeAreSinclair) September 22, 2025
Can they do that? CBS brought on a media expert who claimed that pre-empting the show could cause a breach of contract for their network affiliation. Left unspoken, though, is who that would harm the most -- the network, or the affiliates?
Sinclair owns thirty-plus ABC affiliates. That's a lot of dark time for advertisers, who are likely to get very annoyed very quickly at the way Disney is managing this situation. Disney could play hardball with Sinclair over the affiliate agreement, but they also need those stations for the rest of their programming. Given the hyper-politicized content Kimmel delivers, not to mention his refusal to correct material misrepresentations, Disney may not have the best luck in getting a judge to intervene either. Sinclair has the same speech rights that ABC, Disney, and Kimmel have, after all.
That leaves us with Nexstar, which owns a similar number of affiliates. They also told Disney they would pre-empt Kimmel's show, and together that adds up to about a third of all ABC network stations in the US. If Nexstar sticks with Sinclair, then ABC and Disney will lose millions of dollars in ad revenue before they can even get into court to force them to put Kimmel back on their stations.
At least the lawyers will get rich, as our first commenter quips.
For now, though, Sinclair is standing firm on its demands. They will not air Kimmel again unless and until he issues a public apology, and makes "meaningful" contributions to Turning Point USA and the Kirk family for his egregious comments. Sinclair claims they are negotiating with Disney over the matter, but I suspect the negotiations are mainly a demand for Kimmel to beg forgiveness. If Nexstar holds out too, then Bob Iger will have to tell Kimmel to either suck it up or get used to retirement.
And the rest of us can just pass popcorn, while marveling at how all of this is looking a lot more like a market response to Kimmel's lousy product than a case of government intervention. Sinclair's reminding ABC and Disney that it has its own right to publish or not publish the speech of others, and it's a bit glorious now. While it lasts, of course.
Update: Between Sinclair and Nexstar, a boycott would impact about 25% of ABC's non-O&O stations, but that's not the best metric. Sinclair and Nexstar tend to own stations in more populous markets. A Grok analysis (for what it's worth) estimates that the two account for broadcasting to 39% of the country's population. That's the real risk for Disney/ABC and its advertisers.
Update: My colleague Bonchie calls this "smart business" for Sinclair and expects Nexstar to follow suit:
It's fairly obvious why Sinclair is doing this, and it wouldn't surprise me if we see Nexstar, another large affiliate owner, follow suit. These companies do not expect Kimmel to go on air and show any contrition about his comments, much less offer a sincere apology. Rather, they expect him to double down in a show of defiance. Whether ABC can somehow persuade him to do otherwise has yet to be seen. So why should Sinclair put its neck on the line for a clown like Kimmel when they don't know how this will be handled?
In that sense, their decision to preempt Kimmel's show is just smart business. It's also a necessary moral stand in the face of abject cowardice on the part of ABC. The legacy broadcast network had a chance to rid itself of a money sink and negative lightning rod, but instead, they let a bunch of actors and politicians intimidate them into a self-defeating reversal. What now? They just keep setting cash on fire to make sure Jennifer Aniston and Jim Acosta are happy? Talk about painting yourself into a corner. Kimmel will now be unfirable no matter what happens.
Oh, he'll be fireable. If and when the advertisers join Sinclair and Nexstar in revolt over this decision, Kimmel will become very expendable.
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