September 23, 2025 02:07 PM UTC

Jimmy Kimmel is Back...But Not for Nexstar Stations (the Company Trying to Buy 9News)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Late night television host Jimmy Kimmel returns to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tonight on ABC after parent company Disney reversed course on last week’s “indefinite” suspension amid a flood of protests from activists, celebrities, and production studios. Kimmel marked the occasion by posting a photo on Instagram posing with the late Norman Lear, a longtime television producer who was among those included among former President Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list.”

As we have been documenting in this space, Kimmel’s suspension was about more than just an obviously-disgusting free speech attacks from President Trump and Federal Communications Commissioner bully Brendan Carr. Prominent elected officials such as Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy have been echoing the concerns about the FCC’s attempt to eliminate longtime restrictions on allowing one company to own more than one television station in a given market. Kimmel is back on the air tonight because of Disney’s lifting of his suspension, but broadcast affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair Media will not relent.

Thus, as Brian Stelter of CNN explains today, the battle continues:

With Sinclair refusing to air Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations, and Nexstar continuing to preempt the late-night show, this free speech tug-of-war is far from over.

And as CNN’s Jake Tapper told Seth Meyers on Monday night, “it doesn’t end” with Kimmel.

MAGA media commentators are raging against ABC’s parent Disney, with some influential pundits publicly pressing the Trump administration to take action against the company, calling to mind FCC chair Brendan Carr’s “We can do this the easy way or the hard way” line from last week…

…Tapper called last week’s domino effect “the most direct infringement by the government on free speech that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

“We’ll see what happens when they come for Comcast,” NBC’s parent, “and we’ll see what happens when they come for Warner Bros. Discovery,” CNN’s parent, Tapper said to Meyers. “Maybe you and I will be drawing comic books.” [Pols emphasis]

Nexstar is the company trying to complete a merger with Tegna, the latter of which owns 64 news stations across 51 markets. Nexstar wants to acquire stations such as Denver’s 9News — the top news station in Denver for more than 40 years — and will almost certainly proceed to dismantle the station if that sale goes through in early 2026. Nexstar needs the FCC’s attempt to remove its antitrust restriction to be completed for its merger to see the light of day; it probably have been inclined to keep Kimmel off the air anyway, but Nexstar definitely needs to maintain its boycott now in order to please Trump — and therefore Carr.

The suspension of Kimmel is much more than just President Trump punishing one of his loudest critics (Trump was positively gleeful in the aftermath of the news last week). This is about taking another step toward media consolidation that seeks to eliminate television stations that carry content that isn’t blatantly subservient to the right-wing echo chamber. 9News does a better job of any other news station in the Denver market of performing actual journalism, as opposed to just repeating statements and messages handed to them by others (we’re looking at you, Fox 31 News). If Nexstar is allowed to merge with Tegna, the Fox 31 newscast will likely just be replayed on the 9News stations. The cancellation of shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would undoubtedly become commonplace — particularly in markets controlled by Nexstar (which produces the ultra conservative “Newsnation” cable broadcast) and the unabashedly right-wing Sinclair Media.

As we’ve noted before, this should absolutely be an “all hands on deck” moment for Democratic elected officials everywhere. It’s patently absurd that the FCC would even contemplate eliminating restrictions on the consolidation of television stations in a given market, but the Trump administration is doing everything it can to make that happen so that it can further enrich a few big corporations and throttle any media dissent nationwide.

Unless you want every local news station to look like the unholy lovechild of Fox News and Newsmax, the time to act is NOW.