Ben Stiller responded to the news on X, captioning a breaking-news post, “This isn’t right.” Wanda Sykes joked in an Instagram video that, while President Donald J. Trump had failed to negotiate peace in Gaza or Ukraine, “he did end freedom of speech within his first year.” And Jean Smart, whose character Deborah Vance reckons with TV-network corruption in the latest season of Hacks, posted on Instagram, “I am horrified at the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live. What Jimmy said was FREE speech, not hate speech. People seem to only want to protect free speech when it suits THEIR agenda.”
“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” former President Barack Obama wrote on X. “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader for the Democratic Party, called ABC’s move “despicable, disgusting, and against democratic values.” Comedian Michael Kosta, one of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show hosts, said in an Instagram story, “This is a serious moment in American history. TV networks MUST push back.” And MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote on X, “This is the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s not even close,” adding, “The countries where comedians can’t mock the leader on late night TV are not really ones you want to live in.”
FCC chair Carr welcomed the decisions of ABC and the media group Nexstar, which announced earlier Wednesday that it would stop airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! reruns on its ABC affiliate stations. (Nexstar recently announced plans to acquire a rival TV company in a deal that will require FCC approval, The Times notes.) In a Fox News interview, Carr portrayed Kimmel as an elitist and his own interests as those of the community. Late-night hosts, Carr argued, have gone “from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology.… I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interest of their community. We don’t just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.”
Carr also pressured licensed broadcasters to “push back on [NBC parent company] Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we are going to pre-empt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out.” CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert this year, citing financial reasons, though the president’s distaste for Colbert’s political commentary is well-documented—as is the network’s pending Paramount merger, which will require FCC approval. After the Colbert show’s cancellation, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go.”
The broadly apolitical Jimmy Fallon, Trump added at the time, would be gone “shortly thereafter.” NBC is the only remaining network with two premier late-night shows after CBS brought The Late Late Show to an end in 2023. Following the news of Kimmel’s postponement, Trump also jeered Seth Meyers, host of Late Night With Seth Meyers, and called on NBC to ax his show.
The activist group Refuse Fascism has planned a protest this afternoon (September 18), outside the El Capitan Entertainment Center, in Hollywood, where Kimmel films.
