Disney reinstates Jimmy Kimmel after backlash over capitulation to FCC

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/disney-abc-reinstate-jimmy-kimmel-amid-uproar-over-government-censorship/

by tomrod • 10 months ago

206 124 10 months ago

arstechnica.com

throwaway484764• 10 months ago

The FCC was created in order to prevent the airing of opinions the government disfavored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

tomrod5• 10 months ago

Never heard of him before. Thanks for sharing.

mullingitover• 10 months ago

Government licensing of radio spectrum preceded the FCC and was in response to the RF chaos that hampered the rescue operation after the sinking of the Titanic[1].

[1] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/radio-act-of-1912/

throwaway484764• 10 months ago

That's why I wrote "the FCC" of which is the thread subject.

coderintherye• 10 months ago

You are spreading misinformation. The FCC existed before Coughlin. Furthermore, the FCC declined to take action on Coughlin despite all the pressure it got from the public. Instead, it was the National Association of Broadcasters that forced him off the air.

throwaway484764• 10 months ago

Coughlin started broadcasting in 1926. The FCC was created in 1934.

How exactly did the FCC exist before him?

legitster• 10 months ago

This is incredibly hyperbolic and misleading. The Communications Act of 1934 was passed for a variety of very necessary reasons at the time, the most important being making sure broadcasters didn't hijack each other's signals.

Coughlin's show coincided with the creation of the FCC and they never really tangled. His show was pulled off the network a full 5 years after the FCC was established. FCC regulation may have had a part in that, but there is no reason to believe he in particular was targeted and certainly not that the law was passed to target him.

ajross2• 10 months ago

In an amusingly bald bit of Wikipedia editorializing, while the Coughlin page links to the Communications Act page in the context of (as the upthread throwaway account[1] says) half-implying that it was created to censor opinions...

...the actual page linked doesn't mention Coughlin at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

[1] The habit of throwing discussion bombs like this from throwaway accounts is another sign of HN's decay.

mateus1• 10 months ago

I think the word "censorship" applies here.

Jensson2• 10 months ago

He wouldn't be reinstated if it was censorship. The government didn't back down, just Disney did. This just shows Disney wasn't forced to remove him as some thought, they cancelled his show willingly so could take it back.

insane_dreamer• 10 months ago

The gov openly pressured Disney to drop him -- that's what censorship is.

The fact that Disney reversed course (based on whatever internal calculations we don't know) doesn't mean it wasn't censorship to begin with.

stanfordkid• 10 months ago

The reasoning for why they canned him is a total facade. Nothing he said was really that inflammatory. They canned him because they were afraid the FCC would screw them, then they saw their viewers were angry so they re-negged. Run of the mill spineless bean counters. They kind of won it both ways though, because they were able to feign loyalty and show gov't they only re-instated "because they had to for the money", which Trump will empathize with.

Computer0• 10 months ago

I believe statements directed at Donald's emotional reaction to the incident were the most impactful to any direct reaction from the White House.

defrost3• 10 months ago

To Donald's credit he gave a moving and eloquent eulogy for the First Amendment at the recent memorial.

masfuerte• 10 months ago

"reneged"

tptacek• 10 months ago

I mostly agree, but the conditions that would upset Trump still exist; more so, in fact, because of the outsized attention this got for Kimmel. And yet here he comes anyways!

shadowgovt3• 10 months ago

It's worth remembering that Disney is a mega-corporation and all their calculus is like this. They aren't "on our side" (or, for that matter, particularly against LGBTQIA+ interests); they're on the side with money. A company that size doesn't have morals; it has assets and liabilities.

That's why the Disney+ boycott / cancellation response mattered: it forced them to put losing their ABC network affiliate broadcast rights from the government on the T-sheet against losing their expensive bet on Disney+ (and all the consolidation power and direct-feedline money that brings in). If the viewers hadn't acted to put something on the other side of the T-sheet, it'd be an easy choice for the company.

fennecbutt• 10 months ago

Only after a backlash. I'm sure Jimmy will still take it because what other choice does he have really.

But if he were solid he'd do a Johnny Depp and be like "never working with you fuckers again".

Granted, he has a lot more support staff whose jobs he needs to worry about, too.

jordand• 10 months ago

He's still under contract with ABC too so he's not got an easy way out

apsurd• 10 months ago

Good last line. Yep, I immediately thought of all the behind the camera people it takes to run a show like that.

Conan O'brien also notably ensured his entire team was account for during the whole Tonight Show debacle, and onward.

tobyjsullivan• 10 months ago

I think that last line is getting to the point more than most of the discussion I see.

The host of the show doesn’t really decide what he’s going to say. He reads the script the writers deliver (with his approval, I’m sure). He’s the talking head of a production team.

Jimmy Kimmel the person didn’t get taken off the air. Jimmy Kimmel the show did.

That makes it relatively easy to go back on the air, if they simply give new direction (constraints) to the writing team that satisfy the network.

If I were to guess, I doubt Jimmy Kimmel the person cares what the team is or is not allowed to write in the script.

ChrisArchitect• 10 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45338613

throwaway484764• 10 months ago

Dupe is flagged.

tomrod5• 10 months ago

Weird, this isnt a controversial story at all. FCC dramatically overstepped on free speech, cooler and saner heads prevailed.

alkonaut3• 10 months ago

I hope it cost them a few percent revenue at least. I’m not resubscribing any time soon.

nostromo5• 10 months ago

The political right in this country would love for Disney to be boycotted - just saying.

hypeatei5• 10 months ago

[flagged]

JumpCrisscross3• 10 months ago

The political right in this country would love for Disney to be boycotted - just saying

Don't care.

We've got two groups of people in this country: those willing to sacrifice our republic for personal enrichment and those who won't bend the knee. (The former need to be heavily investigated over the coming decade, mostly so we can write statute that makes their behaviour criminal in the future.)

eighthourblink• 10 months ago

WHY DOES EVERYTHING NEED TO BE POLITICAL!!

esalman• 10 months ago

The bar is much higher for the left.

dyauspitr3• 10 months ago

Disney is a friend. You want to hurt them just enough to make a point but not enough to seriously hurt a actual ally.

Disney content, financially motivated or not, is some of the most left friendly media there is.

thrill• 10 months ago

Disney forgot who their friends were. They need to stay in the sin bin until they fully realize it.

alkonaut3• 10 months ago

Even just the vague suggestion of bending the knee here is a massive mistake. It can’t happen.

Even failing to speak up clearly _against_ ”censorship recommendation” is bad neigh that the business should frankly be cancelled to bankruptcy - including parks, cruises and the rest of it.

nineplay• 10 months ago

I'd be interested to know why you think that is? So far as I can tell all they've done is sprinkle characters here or there that are or might be gay. I haven't seen any shows criticize wealth inequity or champion UBI.

bayarearefugee2• 10 months ago

Disney content, financially motivated or not, is some of the most left friendly media there is.

This is kind of true, but it isn't correct to color this as Disney doing a favor to the left. The reason their content is "left" friendly is that most people are pretty aligned with the "left" when it comes to social issues.

They are offering this content because it is popular with the majority of people (and thus profitable), not as some sort of favor to their friends.

dimitri-vs• 10 months ago

I thought we had all collective moved past the naive idea that any corporation is ever "your friend".

locopati• 10 months ago

Disney has been removing queer characters from shows and movies and canceling shows that have large queer audiences. They're not as left friendly as they'd like you to believe.

Gud• 10 months ago

I have no mega corporations on my friend list.

1970-01-012• 10 months ago

Had the FCC not been so blatant about axing the shows due to speech, and had the backlash been softer, this would have succeeded.

jayknight• 10 months ago

If the president didn't say or tweet every thought that came into his head, he would probably be more successful at implementing even more of his authoritarian goals.

wilg• 10 months ago

Disney was really in a pickle here, because the "right" already hates them for having a few gay characters and characters of disfavored races, so capitulating to Trump's illegal and immoral censorship would leave them with no political allies.

WarOnPrivacy2• 10 months ago

Disney was really in a pickle here

Disney made a preschool-level bad choice. Grade schoolers have figured out that capitulating to a bully is how you signal you want more bulling.

Disney also had examples of law firms and universities that bent the knee to the whitehouse - and how that turned out for them. The reward for tanking their reputations was more whitehouse demands.

throwacct2• 10 months ago

I mean, businesses need to be impartial and take no sides. Their goal is to serve both sides of the aisle. If you have a business or you're the CEO, CTO, etc., you can share your political views privately.

scoopdewoop• 10 months ago

Business consolidation is a civil rights issue. Now every industry is led by giant monopolies that owe the administration favors. The appeasement of autocrats by capitalists for more market control is so inextricable from capitalism itself that any "capitalism" without it is a pure fantasy.

_DeadFred_3• 10 months ago

Ironically the FCC will be approving the Nexstar waiver after finding that the merger will not impact the national conversation by having one group own too many stations/have too much power.

gooseus• 10 months ago

Disney reinstating Kimmel doesn't necessarily mean his show will immediately appear on all ABC-affiliated networks. Conservative broadcaster Sinclair said last week that "regardless of ABC's plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform."
Station owner Nexstar helped pressure Disney into suspending Kimmel's show last week when it announced its ABC-affiliated stations would not air the show "for the foreseeable future."

This is Disney doing damage control for their streaming platforms and other properties while Kimmel is still censored from a large % of audience he used to reach.

I hope he comes back with a show that burns Trump and Carr to the ground and dares them to try something like that again.

axiolite2• 10 months ago

Sinclair blocking Kimmel's show was the first thought on my mind when I saw this headline.

If Disney had any sense at all, they would have realized back when Sinclair was first forcing all their affiliates to air right-wing propaganda,* that their association with Sinclair is an existential threat.

Back then, they should have started dropping their affiliation with Sinclar one tower at a time, as they secure alternative broadcast arrangements in each area. Starting to do it now is better late than never, but I bet Disney execs are too clueless and spineless to stand up to Sinclair is any real way at all, in part because it will cost them a few $$$.

* https://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/19/sinclair.kerry/

cmxch3• 10 months ago

Unfortunately trying to drop Sinclair stations piecemeal (or otherwise) would break enough markets to attract regulatory attention.

One just does not drop ABC from a market and expect nobody to notice.

_DeadFred_3• 10 months ago

If you don't think companies like Sinclair should have so much power, contact the FCC and let them know the Nexstar merger shouldn't go through.

https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/nexstar-tribune

croes5• 10 months ago

But can Disney do anything about the censoring by Nextstar and Sinclair?

fuzzfactor• 10 months ago

Disney reinstates Jimmy Kimmel

It couldn't happen to more deserving citizens.

Now this is real patriotism if the First Amendment can quickly prevail, over lesser isms and their anti-American proponents.

Right now, ABC only live-streams on the open web (no Disney+ or anything needed) the shows from their national studios and local affiliates that are produced in-house, mainly from the news departments. Once the news is over each time, on the internet you only get more live news from the web anchor's control room desk, or something like reruns of investigative stories.

Maybe it would have been quite an ordeal to obtain web rights for the entertainment shows (that's a lot), or perhaps they have been holding out to collect extra revenue from those advertisers before showing them online. A year or two ago there were not yet ads on the web during the broadcast news breaks, only a spinner on a splash screen until the ad was over. It wasn't really too bad like that. Now there are ads but I don't know if they are the same as the broadcast ones.

Regardless, this might be a good time to flush it out like it could have been already if they set their mind to it.

Get Kimmel and his advertisers, guests, and musicians to agree to go live on the web and on the air simultaneously so anybody on the web can watch it like they used to do in real-time regardless of whether their local affiliate carries it on the air or not.

Doesn't Walt Disney have an entertainment lawyer or two that could handle this if the right geek was supervising the sprint? Attorneys pulling their weight, with geeks doing the engineering full stop and it could be ready in a week.

This would also be a good time to make special deals with other entertainment powerhouses to get artists like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen to appear who can help build popularity beyond the ability of the haters. And not stop until it's been accomplished.

Maybe a worldwide audience would compensate for a loss in local broadcast consumers.

Never know until you try.

If at all possible they need to throw a grassroots monkey wrench into any media merger plans for the foreseeable future too.

SimianSci2• 10 months ago

Brendan Carr is overwhelmingly partisan and suprisingly unqualified for the role he occupies as the Chair of the FCC. Anyone paying attention to his actions over his time in office is not surprised by this outcome. Carr has been regularly going on podcasts and threatening that the FCC will be "going after" anyone unfavorable to the Trump administration, this is just the first time a company flinched in response. Im happy to hear Disney is rethinking their reflexive reaction.

Its deeply troubling to see the priorities of the FCC shift from expanding things like access to broadband to instead prioritize podcast appearances and fascistic threats. Expect more of this, as Carr seems to only be emboldened by the outcome.

nerpderp82• 10 months ago

Carr needs to leave. It isn't his job to police the political airwaves.

tomrod5• 10 months ago

Weird that this got more than 100 votes in less than an hour then got pushed to page 2. I don't understand the HN algorithm I guess.

yodon• 10 months ago

One of the highest priorities for the HN algorithm is to promote good interactions and discourage bad interactions. The logic is if you have a lot of people bickering with each other, regardless of the topic, it normalizes bad behavior. HN is trying to sustain itself as a forum with great discussions, so it very intentionally downranks anything that looks to the algorithm like it has people bickering with each other (eg. Up vote/down vote wars as a proxy for disagreement). Yes, this means many important topics move off the homepage because there is lots of disagreement within them. Encouraging good discussions is consciously viewed as more important than any individual topic.

mizzao• 10 months ago

Just bookmark https://news.ycombinator.com/active and you will see the actual, real frontpage.

dang2• 10 months ago

Those threads wouldn't exist if the real frontpage didn't exist, because the real frontpage is what keeps this site existing at all.

cmxch3• 10 months ago

People like curiosity, not vitriol.

dang2• 10 months ago

It set off the flamewar detector. That's pretty standard (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

throwacct2• 10 months ago

They capitulated because they lost the right a few years ago, and they can't lose the left either.

cbradford3• 10 months ago

So now we know the reality. An employer, Disney, felt an employee, Kimmel, was damaging their business, let's not forget the point of an employee is to make money for their employer, and as a result took corrective action with the employee. Who was not fired. If a waiter at a restaurant was offending the customers, he would have been fired. Kimmel was treated very kindly and will continue to receive his paycheck. Looks like the wailing about free speech missed the mark

tene80i3• 10 months ago

You left out the part where a government official all but demanded they do what they did.

cbradford3• 10 months ago

Must have been a VERY strong demand for Disney to completely ignore it.

defrost3• 10 months ago

More accurately,

now we have another take on the story, this time the crafted PR spin from Disney retconned for damage control.

cbradford3• 10 months ago

Disney was probably inundated with demands from other on air talent to reinstate the employee. They then made the calculated judgment that maintaining good employee relations was on balance better served by putting the employee back on the assembly line. This is all usual and standard business. Anyone on here that has ever worked a job has contract that says what they can and cannot do while in the employ of the company.

_DeadFred_3• 10 months ago

Even if a man is dying of cancer that does not justify the government murdering him.

The Trump appointed FCC head, who is currently evaluating multiple multi-billion dollar requests, said about Kimmel 'we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way'.

hackable_sand• 10 months ago

Land of the free, home of the brave? Ring a bell?

rinnith• 10 months ago

It's seriously embarrassing a bunch of conservatives are demanding Kimmel to be cancelled over his frankly tame comments when they were all most likely the exact same people screaming about the "cancel culture liberals" for years. Truly pathetic how they're flip flopping on this.

seanmcdirmid• 10 months ago

How does the FCC even matter anymore when people are increasingly getting their content via streaming? The only reason they have any leverage over Kimmel at all (and not, for example, South Park) is because ABC still broadcasts it.

JumpCrisscross3• 10 months ago

How does the FCC even matter anymore when people are increasingly getting their content via streaming?

"The ability of the FCC to regulate internet content and platforms depends on statutory authority. In holding the forums on captioning of online video content, the FCC could look to the language of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which included language that asked the FCC to look at the accessibility of video content used on internet platforms. In other areas, the FCC’s jurisdiction is not as clear, but calls arise regularly for the FCC to act to regulate content that, as we have written in other contexts, looks more and more like broadcast content and competes directly with that content.

Calls for the FCC to regulate internet content and the companies that provide that content are certain to multiply. In another of our weekly summaries of regulatory actions of interest to broadcasters, we noted recent meetings with FCC Commissioners’ offices by representatives of the TV affiliates organizations, in which they asked that the FCC consider regulation of linear programming services delivered through internet platforms in the same way that they regulate cable and satellite multichannel video providers, including the possibility of adopting a system of must-carry and retransmission consent. This is not at all a new idea, having been raised in 2014 in an FCC proceeding that asked for public comment on the question of whether to subject online video providers to MVPD regulation – a proceeding that never resulted in any action" [1].

[1] https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2022/05/articles/does-the-f...

TheCleric• 10 months ago

Because they still have leverage over local stations and in turn those stats have leverage over ABC/Disney.

RickJWagner• 10 months ago

Meh. Kimmel has a history of racist and sexist comedy, to include blackface performances. For me, that’s a big turn off.

I think Ted Cruz had the right attitude for this one. It’s unwise to hammer unfairly on the opposition when you’re in power, because the pendulum inevitably swings back.

cmxch3• 10 months ago

And there goes the remaining customers of Disney. And hopefully their licenses.

duxup• 10 months ago

I suspect the vast majority of customers before and after this whole thing aren't participating in a boycott either way.

tzs• 10 months ago

Disney was getting some pretty funny international ridicule over canceling Kimmel. The best I've seen was this video [1] produced by a late-night show in the Netherlands of Disney announcing a new direction to better serve today's audiences.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_hQ1plKmCM

croes5• 10 months ago

I took it as more of a ridicule of Trump than Disney.

mieses• 10 months ago

Disney needs a win badly, even if it's imagined.

ethics13• 10 months ago

Is it me, or is this awesome site turning into Reddit v2?

Disney reinstates Jimmy Kimmel after backlash over capitulation to FCC

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