US entertainment company Disney has announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live will return to the air, six days after it suspended the talk-show host following threats by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman over comments the host had made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer.
In announcing the decision on Monday, ABC’s parent company said the show will return to the air on Tuesday and that it had suspended production of the late-night comedy show “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country”.
Kimmel’s show was taken off the air on September 17, after he joked about the political reaction to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The decision by US network ABC to pull the show led to widespread criticism, as well as boycotts against Disney and its streaming services.
In a statement issued on Monday, the ABC said it had “spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday”.
Disney CEO Bob Iger, Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden and Kimmel were in talks over the weekend and reached a decision on Monday to return Kimmel to the air, according to two people familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported.
The decision was guided by what was in the entertainment company’s best interest, rather than external pressure from station owners or the FCC, the sources said.
Kimmel is expected to address the issue when his show returns on Tuesday, according to the sources.
A spokeswoman for Kimmel could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.
Trump, who has repeatedly pressured broadcasters to stop airing content that he has found objectionable, had celebrated the news of Kimmel’s suspension and referred to it erroneously as an outright cancellation of the show.
Controversial remarks
Kimmel, who has frequently targeted Trump in his show, drew fire for remarks he made last Monday about the September 10 assassination of Kirk, who was shot down while addressing a crowd of 3,000 people on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.
Kirk, a 31-year-old conservative political activist and podcast host, had been credited for building support for Trump and the Republican Party among young voters in 2024.
Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old technical school student from Utah, has been charged with Kirk’s murder, but the precise motive for the killing remains unclear.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used his office and the courts to attack unflattering speech about him that he has called defamatory or false. Throughout both his terms, Trump has threatened to rescind licences for local broadcast affiliates of national networks. Licences are approved by the FCC, a nominally independent regulatory body.
Disney’s move signals the first big push back against the Trump administration by big media.
The ABC suspended Kimmel’s show on Wednesday after Carr threatened investigations and regulatory action against licensed broadcasters who aired Kimmel.
The owners of dozens of local television stations affiliated with the ABC said they would no longer carry the show, including Nexstar, which needs FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger with Tegna.
On Friday, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, a Republican, said that Carr’s threat was dangerous.
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