Regular viewers of WJLA, the ABC affiliate for the nation’s capital, know what happens around 11:30 p.m. on weeknights: The news anchor riffs about some remarkable human or cute animal, then yields the airwaves to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
There has been a break in the routine.
WJLA is one of dozens of local ABC stations across the country boycotting Mr. Kimmel’s show in response to the late-night comedian’s remarks about Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk this month. Instead, the stations are running programming of their own choosing; in the case of WJLA, it has been another round of local news and weather, followed by a half-hour of national news.
The decision to not air Mr. Kimmel’s show, which was suspended by ABC last week and returned on Tuesday, was made by the stations’ corporate owners, Nexstar and Sinclair. But the swirl of corporate statements, broadsides from critics and politicking from the Federal Communications Commission in recent days have left confusion as to just what is behind the companies’ moves.
The two companies have said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were insensitive, particularly at a raw national moment. But their critics have ascribed another motive, that both Sinclair and Nexstar are exploring deals for their sprawling network of local affiliates that will require approval from the F.C.C.
The man leading the agency who would need to sign off, Brendan Carr of the F.C.C., has been a leading critic of Mr. Kimmel’s comments and has applauded the stations’ owners for taking matters into their own hands.
“There’s no doubt that the motivation was political,” said Blair Levin, a telecommunications lawyer who served as chief of staff at the F.C.C. under the Clinton administration. “But the real question is, was it political because they agreed with Carr’s critique, or is it because they felt from an economic perspective, it would be good to use this moment to curry more political favor with the Trump administration?”
Nexstar and Sinclair declined to comment for this article beyond pointing to past public statements they have made. A representative for Mr. Carr did not respond to a request for comment.
Nexstar and Sinclair are two of a handful of companies that own a vast majority of the sprawling network of local stations that deliver National Football League games, top-of-the-hour weather updates and late-night comedy to millions of Americans. When the stations run programming provided by the national network, they get a portion of airtime to sell their own advertising. When they run their own programming, like news shows, they usually keep all of the revenue.
The unforgiving economics of local television have driven consolidation within the industry, Mr. Levin said. With advertising dollars siphoned away by tech platforms like TikTok, the fastest way for local TV station groups to bulk up is by striking deals to buy one another.
Nexstar, based in Irving, Texas, now owns or provides services to roughly 200 stations. It recently struck a $6.2 billion deal to buy another large station owner, Tegna, which owns roughly 64 stations.
In order for the deal to be completed, the F.C.C. will need to relax its rules about how many stations one company can own. Mr. Carr has expressed skepticism of that rule, and the agency is expected to discuss other possible changes to local TV ownership in a meeting next week.
Nexstar has said nothing about the deal’s role in the boycott but has said that it does not consult with the F.C.C. about its decision. In an announcement on Wednesday, Nexstar said that it was “continuing to evaluate” the situation and that it was talking to the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s corporate owner, about “ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.”
For its part, Disney has valuable programs, including National Football League games, that it could use as leverage in its negotiations with Nexstar and Sinclair.
Sinclair, the parent company of WJLA, has also gobbled up scores of stations in recent years to become one of the most influential local TV companies, with ABC affiliates in major metropolitan areas. Last month, Sinclair said that it was exploring potential deals for its broadcast business.
The company has been accused for years of tilting its newscasts to the right: Eugene Ramirez, an anchor of its national newscast, resigned last year over concerns about conservative bias, and the company has raised eyebrows for distributing a segment to its local stations that included a warning against so-called fake news.
“It seems to me that this is less about the two of them jockeying or competing against one another,” says Emily Barr, a longtime local TV executive who formerly served as president and chief executive of the Graham Media Group, which owns seven local stations. “It feels to me more like they’re teaming up.”
Ms. Barr hastened to clarify that she wasn’t accusing them of collusion, merely shared interests and shared strategies.
While Mr. Kimmel’s remarks infuriated many conservatives, Nexstar and Sinclair’s boycott affects Americans in both red and blue states, pulling the show from liberal metropolitan enclaves and rural Republican strongholds. Sinclair owns ABC affiliates in Portland, Ore., and Seattle, where criticism of the boycott has been strident, and Nexstar operates stations in both Nashville and New Orleans.
It’s unclear how the pre-emptions are affecting the companies’ bottom line, and the danger for the those stations is that viewers may sniff out any attempts to stretch or duplicate news content to fill time.
“It doesn’t matter if you have all the ad revenue, and you have nobody watching,” Ms. Barr said. “So you have to have the ratings.”
Mr. Kimmel, thanks in part to the controversy, has the ratings, averaging 6.2 million viewers for Tuesday’s episode, when he returned to the air. That figure, almost four times his usual audience haul, came even as the Nexstar and Sinclair ABC affiliates offered competing programming.
That sets up a choice for the conglomerates’ top executives. Do they continue pumping out stories about highway closures, a firefighter recovering from a shooting, violence at high school football games, a hockey star handing out cereal at an area grocery store — to cite just some of the pre-emption material from Sinclair’s WJLA? Or do they air the guy everyone’s talking about?
Brooks Barnes contributed reporting.
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
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