A late-night monologue, a shocking suspension – and a reinstatement. Jimmy Kimmel’s still taking risks
By Dan Heching, CNN
(CNN) — In September of last year, late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel found himself thrust into the spotlight — one that reached far beyond his studio stage.
The late-night scene was already in upheaval after CBS abruptly canceled Stephen Colbert’s show that summer, a move that sent shockwaves through the industry and fueled speculation about the future of the long-standing comedy format.
So when Kimmel’s comments connected to the alleged killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk went viral for all the wrong reasons, the risks were even higher than usual.
As outrage on the right flared all the way up to the White House, the host and his staff received a barrage of threats, with their personal information doxxed. An administration official threatened to revoke ABC affiliate licenses. Just hours later, ABC suspended Kimmel’s show “indefinitely.”
It was a moment that even Kimmel himself would later admit his show might not have survived. “I was like, I’m never coming back on the air,” he later said. But he was wrong – he did come back.
‘The easy way or the hard way’
In the days following Kirk’s assassination, Kimmel – no stranger to stirring the pot with pointed political humor – focused on perceptions around the alleged killer, saying “the MAGA Gang (was) desperately trying to characterize this kid” as “anything other than one of them.”
Kimmel also mocked President Donald Trump for talking about the White House East Wing renovation when a member of the press asked him how he was personally coping with Kirk’s death.
The funnyman again discussed the politicization of Kirk’s assassination on the following night’s show, saying “many in MAGA-land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
As a growing chorus of right-wing media pundits took issue, conservative podcaster Benny Johnson had Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission, on his show to address the situation.
Carr, whose agency licenses local TV stations across the country, said the matter could be handled “the easy way or the hard way” for ABC and parent company Disney.
Just hours later, station group owners Nexstar and Sinclair said they would no longer be airing Kimmel’s show in their respective markets. Shortly after, ABC announced it was removing the program from the air entirely, saying “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely.”
From primetime to preemption
The move to take Kimmel off the air sparked a firestorm, with critics blasting the FCC for overreach and encroachment on free speech, especially since Nexstar was in the process of seeking FCC approval for a proposed merger with another station group owner, Tegna.
The suspension even caused a consumer boycott of Disney+ and Hulu, streaming platforms that are part of Disney’s portfolio.
Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett after Kimmel’s show was taken off the air, the lone Democrat-aligned FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez, said, “the First Amendment does not allow us, the FCC, to tell broadcasters what they can broadcast.”
“I saw the clip. He did not make any unfounded claims, but he did make a joke, one that others may even find crude, but that is neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration in ways that violate the First Amendment,” Gomez told CNN. “This sets a dangerous new precedent, and companies must stand firm against any efforts to trade away First Amendment freedom.”
Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — a longtime target of Kimmel’s ire — denounced the FCC’s comments ahead of the preemption as “unbelievably dangerous” and compared some of Carr’s rhetoric to “mafioso” tactics.
Others, however, took issue with Kimmel’s comments immediately following Kirk’s assassination, and welcomed his show going off the air.
Those included Trump himself, who posted on social media: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.”
Turmoil behind the scenes
Several people who spoke to CNN at the time said that Disney employees and staff members on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” began to receive death threats following Carr’s remarks, with their email addresses and phone numbers doxxed and blasted across social media.
According to one of the individuals familiar with the situation, Kimmel was prepared to deliver his monologue the night he was taken off the air and had planned to address the right-wing backlash to his remarks. This individual described Kimmel’s planned monologue as “very hot” at the time, taking aim at the MAGA base.
That was when Disney/ABC executives spoke with Kimmel and decided to preempt the show indefinitely – in hopes of protecting Kimmel and the Disney brand from accelerating the controversy.
Later, as a guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” after his suspension, Kimmel described the moment ABC gave him the news he was being pulled. With five writers in his office at the time, the only private place where he could take the call was the bathroom.
“So I go into the bathroom, and I’m on the phone with the ABC executives, and they say, ‘Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re going to say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air… I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ and they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ Then there was a vote, and I lost the vote.”
Kimmel added that he called some of the show’s executive producers into his office to share the news, and said he turned white. “I thought, that’s it. It’s over, it’s over. I was like, I’m never coming back on the air.”
‘This show is not important’
Kimmel could have walked away at that point. Or, he could have folded in the face of opposition and offered to self-censor in his monologues.
Instead, he he remained engaged, taking phone calls from many contacts on both sides of the aisle, and fought behind the scenes to keep his show. And one week later, he was back on the air.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney said in a statement at the time. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
And so Kimmel returned – his way, and with newfound momentum.
“This show is not important,” Kimmel told viewers on his first night back. “What’s important is that we live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
Kimmel spoke about spending time with comedians from countries where people “get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power, and worse.”
“They know how lucky we are here,” he said. “Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country, and that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen (Colbert) off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American.”
He also addressed the remarks that led ABC to suspend his show, saying it was never his “intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”
He “was not happy” about his show’s suspension, he said; but he also expressed gratitude to Disney for “allowing me to use their platform” night after night.
The monologue video from Kimmel’s return has become his most-viewed monologue of all time on YouTube, and his first post-suspension show averaged 6.3 million viewers via traditional television, more than three times the show’s typical TV viewership. In the key advertiser-friendly demographic of viewers ages 18 to 49, the show scored its “highest regularly scheduled episode in over 10 years,” ABC said at the time.
And Kimmel didn’t back off from his trademark commentary on the Trump administration, sharing a clip of the president on Air Force One the week prior, attacking Kimmel for having “no ratings.”
“Well, I do tonight,” Kimmel said, to raucous applause.
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CNN’s Julianne Pepitone, Brian Stelter, Elizabeth Wagmeister, Liam Reilly, John Liu and Michael Williams contributed reporting.
