Kimmel Isn’t Roseanne — Disney Now Hurts Own Wallet

ABC’s decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely is a statement about the limits of speech in a media landscape that already feels precarious. By pulling him off the air over an unverified claim about Charlie Kirk’s killer, the network turned a late-night quip into a referendum on who gets to define acceptable commentary. For Hollywood, and anyone who sees free expression as more than a brand slogan, the message lands with force.

ABC’s voluntary move to program a rerun of “Celebrity Family Feud” at 11:35pm came after verbal threats from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and ongoing threats from President Donald Trump that the network should pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The next morning, the chilling effect was so profound that Kimmel wasn’t even mentioned on ABC’s “The View.”

Comedians have long complained that “political correctness” from the left limited what they could say, but the most aggressive assault on free speech now comes from the right. Carr threatened ABC with retaliation if it didn’t pull Kimmel; when the network complied, Carr celebrated by sending CNN’s Brian Stelter a gif from “The Office.” That’s textbook government intimidation.

ABC’s response reveals something new as well. No one expects corporations to be bold defenders of principle, but Disney went further by doing the unthinkable: It damaged its own financial interests in order to placate Trump. When appeasing a president outweighs a company’s bottom line, its programming choices, and its freedom to operate, we’ve entered uncharted territory in American history.

IndieWire spoke with Kelly McBride, SVP at the Poynter Institute and Chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, who called the moment unprecedented. If there was hesitation to speak out before, she warned, it will be far worse now because core constitutional freedoms are in jeopardy.

What Makes Kimmel Different from Disney Firing Roseanne Barr or Gina Carano?

“ABC is subverting its own business interests to appease the president and his political beliefs, and you don’t have any previous example of this,” McBride said. “Jimmy Kimmel is paid to be provocative. That’s the whole point of comedy, and especially daily off-the-news kind of commentary. Up until now, it has been their business decision to have a comedian in that slot.”

Indeed, ABC pays Kimmel $15 to $16 million a year for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” under his current contract, which expires next year. In the 22 years since the show debuted in 2003 he’s become a network fixture who also hosts “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and hosted the Academy Awards four times.

To cast aside Kimmel is to lose a massive investment. That was not the case when ABC fired Roseanne Barr from the revival of “Roseanne” or Disney fired Gina Carano from “The Mandalorian.” “The Conners” ran without Barr for seven seasons and 112 episodes; “The Mandalorian” continued without Carano. Firing those actors was Disney’s move to protect its investment. Firing Kimmel goes against market forces.

But What About Nexstar Refusing to Air “Jimmy Kimmy Live”? Didn’t That Hurt ABC’s Business Interests? And What About Kimmel’s Declining Ratings?

Although the dip in linear late-night viewership even outpaces the massive broadcast declines, Disney could have found a way to utilize Kimmel on Disney+.

“ABC had a long-term calculus and you have a short-term, immediate calculus here,” McBride said. “Short term, if they felt like their affiliates were going to stick with them, they maybe would not have felt so much pressure. But Disney has a major streaming platform where they could satisfy audience demand for Kimmel and viewers could watch him even if their affiliates dropped him. That’s where the political pressure is a key factor here.”

Does Kimmel Have Any Legal Options?

Kimmel and his production company would almost certainly have no viable legal case against ABC. The First Amendment protects individuals from government coercion and punishment, but it does not require private companies to tolerate speech they find unacceptable from their employees or representatives. That’s why people can lose jobs over social media posts: In private employment, you don’t actually have First Amendment rights.

“The government can’t throw you in jail for what you say — that’s what the First Amendment is about,” McBride said. “But it doesn’t protect you against your employer disapproving of what you say, and then taking action. ABC has a First Amendment right to not air him. Kimmel doesn’t have a lot of standing here against ABC. He could argue reputational harm, but what’s he going to gain? “

And then there’s the matter of his contract.

“I’m betting his contract gives the corporation an out,” McBride said. “As long as they’re still paying him, they don’t have to air him.”

Is There a First Amendment Case?

Yes, but it belongs to ABC. The network is the one that’s been subject to government coercion, intimidation, and oppression by Carr and Trump. However, there’s no indication they would because capitulation to Trump has been corporate America’s strategy.

“As far as the corporations themselves, they haven’t had any appetite for fighting very winnable cases,” McBride said. “I doubt that any of the corporations themselves would wage a legal battle against regulatory action that seems unfair and politically motivated. As far as the First Amendment, it is ABC’s First Amendment rights that are being infringed upon. And ABC is saying, ‘We’re okay with that. We’re willing to silence a voice to ameliorate these political interests.’ So, as a corporation, if you are willing to do that, even if it’s against your own financial interests, I don’t know who’s going to fight for you then. There’s nobody else who’ll make the argument for you.”

Did Kimmel, as a Comedian, Have a Responsibility to Not Repeat a False Claim About the Kirk Shooter Being MAGA? Should He Have Been Fact-Checked?

“Comedians have no responsibility to do so,” McBride said. “None. There are three different common structures around jokes based on current events. One is to flatten out the nuance, to take the nuance out of a news story, which is what Kimmel’s joke did. He said, ‘They’re trying to claim that he’s not one of their own.’ And so, he took the nuance out of it, and he built that joke on the shooter’s family history.”

“The other way of structuring a joke is to overemphasize certain parts of the nuance. To disproportionately focus on one or two things, that’s how you get jokes that are built on irony. The other way to structure a joke is to do comparisons. To compare similar situations and show hypocrisy, basically. Those are the three basic structures of current-events jokes.

“And the comedians work with all of those, and they push the boundaries and blur the lines with all of them,” she said. “And frankly, that’s what makes it funny is because they make you see something in a way that you didn’t see it. Now, the problem with Kimmel’s joke was it just wasn’t that funny, but there’s lots of things that aren’t that funny. So, I mean, he was absolutely operating well within the boundaries of how comedy works in current events.”

What Is the Future of Free Speech in Public Forums?

“We are in an environment where there is a clear chilling effect on free speech,” McBride said. “And it is coming because the government is putting pressure on employers, and employers are responding to that pressure by pressuring their employees, either firing them or restricting their abilities to speak. That is happening at universities, it’s happening in entertainment, it’s happening in journalism, and it’s even happening to regular people who wouldn’t necessarily be considered powerful or influential. And so, that is an alarming state to be in because the way that chilling effects work is they cause people to be very cautious.

“And a lot of times we would rely on our comedians to be the ones who are out there pushing the boundaries,” she said. “That’s the role that comedy and satire have in a marketplace of ideas, whether it’s cartoonists or the people who tell jokes or the people who do skits. They’re the ones who are out there and pushing the boundaries of what’s appropriate and what’s acceptable, and that then creates space for everybody else.

“So, cartoonists are really on the front line and they have almost all gone away. There’s very few political cartoonists even left because you can’t make a living at it. But we’re definitely in a place where everybody is being very, very careful about what they say. Regular people are not saying what they think on social media because they are afraid of the consequences.”

The Takeaways

Americans aren’t a traditionally cautious people. The question is whether companies like ABC believe this level of caution is merited to weather a temporary storm or if they think this is the new normal and moves like pulling Kimmel put them in good stead for the long-term reality. One that we have not seen before in the history of this democracy.