Jimmy Kimmel is coming back to the airwaves.
ABC just revealed that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is returning on Tuesday night after “thoughtful conversations” with parent company Disney.
A spokesman said, “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. 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.”
On Wednesday, ABC indefinitely preempted Jimmy Kimmel Live! following a furor around Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer.
Kimmel, on his show last Monday night, said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
FCC chairman Brendan Carr subsequently called threatened ABC to “find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead” and said that the comedian’s comments were “some of the sickest conduct possible”.
Hours later, local station group Nexstar revealed that it would “preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future” as it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk”. It was soon followed by similar comments from rival station group Sinclair.
Moments later, Disney made its own decision to pause the show.
What followed was days of discussions between Disney and Kimmel as the noise around the suspension grew louder on both sides of the political aisle.
Celebrities including Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep called out “government threats to our freedom of speech”, others including Tatiana Maslany, star of Marvel’s Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, urged people to cancel their subscriptions to Disney services.
Kimmel also received the support of his late-night peers including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver as well as former late-night hosts David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno.
Even some right-wing politicians such as Ted Cruz, who is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the body that has oversight over the FCC, warned it was dangerous for government to silence free speech as Democrats, when they next enter the White House, could use the precedent to silence conservatives.
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