Jimmy Kimmel faces a fight, but not with the FCC

It’s nice to know that Americans on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum agree on something: Free speech is critical to a free society.

There are caveats to this agreement, though.

FREE SPEECH … WHEN CONVENIENT

Some who were eager to see ultraprogressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak at the University of Iowa in 2020 probably also supported punishing the student organization that invited conservative commentator Matt Walsh to speak in 2023. Some Christians who want their kids to be able talk about their faith at school might object to Muslim students expressing theirs. Not cool.

In other words, many often embrace free speech for the sake of themselves and others only when it is palatable to do so. I didn’t see many devout Christians defending the right of the Satanic Temple people to have their own holiday display at the Iowa Capitol in 2023. And I certainly didn’t hear any complaints from the political left when social media platforms YouTube, Facebook and Twitter shut down accounts for election- or COVID-19-related “misinformation” between 2021 and 2024. In fact, they all seemed quite pleased.

I wasn’t pleased. But the companies that own those platforms are private companies with the right to decide their own user policies. I couldn’t call it censorship. It was merely bad business — albeit with significant implications for public trust.

GOVERNMENT PRESSURE TO REGULATE SPEECH

It turned out I was wrong. It was censorship. The companies later admitted that some decisions to block certain posts and suspend certain accounts had strong government influence behind them. In a 2024 letter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, told the House Judiciary Committee that the Biden administration in 2021 had “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire."

And on Tuesday, lawyers for Alphabet, parent company to Google and YouTube, wrote in a letter that the Biden administration had "conducted repeated and sustained outreach" to pressure YouTube to remove videos that were not in violation of company policy.

The heavy hand of government should not be used on companies to stifle their users’ and employees’ free speech. Should that heavy hand be what takes late night television host Jimmy Kimmel’s show away, it would not be OK.

I’m adamant about that. And I have been no fan of Kimmel since long before Sept. 15, when he crudely referenced the alleged killer of conservative icon Charlie Kirk to attack supporters of President Donald Trump during his show’s opening monologue. The comments ultimately lead to his brief suspension by executives at The Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent company.

Luckily — and contrary to what is currently believed by the political left — the government is not pressuring ABC to dump Kimmel.

In their defense, though, they’ve been given enough of a reason to think so.

FCC CHAIR’S REMARKS CRITICIZED

During a Sept. 17 appearance on “The Benny Show,” Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr discussed the possibility of FCC involvement to address Kimmel’s controversial monologue with podcaster Benny Johnson, a Cedar Rapids native and graduate of Prairie High School and the University of Iowa.

Carr’s remarks, which were swiftly and sharply criticized, included the following (emphasis mine):

“ … What people don't understand is that the broadcasters … are entirely different than people that use other forms of communication. They have a license granted by us at the FCC and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest … But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

COMMISSIONER LATER CLARIFIES

Carr has since said that his “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” comment was not intended as a threat to pull broadcasting licenses if ABC didn’t permanently show Kimmel the door.

Instead, he told the audience Monday at a global affairs summit in New York City, he was intending to point out that the public interest under which FCC-licensed broadcasters operate involves accuracy standards. An FCC-licensed broadcaster can opine, but they can’t lie.

When a distortion is alleged, it can be worked out between the companies that provide the programming and the stations that broadcast them — which, according to Carr, is “the easy way,” as doing so does not warrant FCC involvement. When the two parties cannot reach a resolution, a “news distortion complaint” is filed, and by law, the FCC “has to adjudicate that complaint.” That, says Carr, is the hard way.

“The FCC and myself in particular have expressed no view on the ultimate merits, had something like that been filed, what our take would be one way or another,” Carr said Monday.

Fair enough. But I submit that it wouldn’t hurt the nation’s chief broadcast regulator to brush up on how his own comments are distributed to — and received by — the general public, lest his words get feasted on by the politically ravenous. Because Carr did not initially articulate the distortion standard or elaborate on what it entails, his comments were interpreted by many, including conservatives such as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, as signaling an FCC smackdown in breach of free speech.

In reality, as Carr (eventually) stated, the FCC would only get involved with a legitimate distortion complaint. It would likely be hard for a complainant to prove that Kimmel’s comments were an intentional distortion of fact and not just an ill-advised jibe.

It isn’t Kimmel versus the feds, It’s Kimmel versus the free market. The market will decide the fate of Kimmel and his show. And it has multiple players.

The network

ABC, as the network, has to decide if they want to continue employing the embattled host after his contract expires in May 2026, and what they’re willing (or able) to pay him for it. That’ll depend on things like on ad revenue and overhead expenses.

The picture is likely not pretty, if CBS is any indicator. The network is canceling its Late Show with Stephen Colbert at the end of the current season. Colbert’s show, which costs $100 million to produce, is hemorrhaging cash, losing $40 million per year.

The host

Kimmel himself has to decide whether he wants to keep doing his 22-year-old show, and how much money he thinks he should be paid.

The stations

Local affiliates have to decide whether to actually broadcast Kimmel’s show. Usually a non-issue, distributors Nexstar and Sinclair, which own 23% of ABC affiliates, elected to continue preempt Kimmel’s show until he apologizes for his Sept. 15 remarks.

Upon returning on Sept. 23, Kimmel explained his comments but stopped short of issuing any apology. On Friday afternoon, both Nexstar and Sinclair announced they would resume airing Kimmel’s program on their stations. Both have pending merger deals that must be approved by the FCC, but both insist their decisions are not influenced by the FCC.

Advertisers

Like the network itself, affiliates’ bottom line relies largely on ad revenue. Given that some advertisers had paused ads on Nexstar and Sinclair stations while Kimmel was preempted,

Now that his show has resumed airing on all stations, will Kimmel be able to keep the viewers?

The viewers

Upon his return from suspension, Kimmel drew his largest crowd in over a decade, even while preempted by almost one-fourth of ABC affiliates nationwide.

If those numbers were boosted by non-regular viewers tuning in out of curiosity given the political hype, they are unlikely to remain.

Regardless of whether he keeps his ratings bump, Kimmel, like all other late nights network hosts, is desperately in need of viewers if his show is to survive. Late night entertainment isn’t merely past its prime. It’s dying.

HOSTS HAVEN’T KILLED LATE NIGHT … BUT THEY’VE HELPED

Kimmel and his peers are already competing in a wild market. Streaming services offer content that is more or less infinite. Americans are canceling cable services in droves. Without premium livestreaming services or an antenna, some do without broadcast channels altogether.

For the little audience that remains after all that, hosts like Kimmel and Colbert infuse politics into their jokes in a way that doesn’t make fun of politicians so much as malign them — and you, if you’re one of the 77 millions of Americans who voted for Trump.

Seventy-seven million is a lot of viewers to alienate.

They didn’t stick the knife in the back of late night comedy shows. But by smugly looking down their noses at people with differing politics, Kimmel, Colbert et. al twist it regularly.

No, Kimmel’s debacle isn’t a national referendum on free speech. Free speech isn’t the prize in this fight. It’s the pawn that keeps our attention.

In all fairness, he’s gotta have something to draw in the audience. It sure isn’t comedy anymore.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com

Note: The online version of this column has been updated to reflect Nexstar’s Friday announcement that it would resume airing Kimmel’s program on its stations.