Senators Attack FCC Chair As Disney Admits Local Affiliates Got Jimmy Kimmel Suspended

The zombie lie behind the false media martyr continues to shuffle along

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr was not mincing words as he flatly denied threatening anyone over alleged comedian Jimmy Kimmel. “Democrats at the time were saying that we explicitly threatened to pull a license if Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired. That never happened”, Carr told a Senate committee last week. “That was nothing more than projection and distortion by Democrats.” Rated true.

True, because Disney admitted exactly as much a week before the hearing. Alex Weprin writes for The Hollywood Reporter, an authoritative trade publication on most days, that “a local affiliate revolt was at the heart of the decision” to suspend Kimmel, not Carr’s statement supporting the affiliates. Carr has started an investigation of the networks to determine whether they are “exerting undue influence or control” over affiliate broadcasters serving communities that sometimes do not want their content.

Even Sen. Ted Cruz got it wrong. The issue with Kimmel’s suspension is not free speech at all, but the economics of streaming. Disney owns Hulu and Disney+, which compete with ABC for advertisers on the free tiers with original content that is not on the networks. “The Jimmy Kimmel preemptions were simply the most public example” of the dispute over streaming content that affiliates don’t get to broadcast.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar admonished Chairman Carr that “there is no place in chilling political satire [sic], but after Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue, you went on a podcast and suggested that ABC should take Kimmel off the air saying, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ Those were your words. You think it is appropriate to use your position to threaten companies that broadcast political satire?”

“I think any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public interest standard, and that’s been the case for decades”, Carr answered. We must rate this answer true because Disney says so in their 10 December FCC filing on the question of affiliate relationships. “Over the last 30 years, ABC affiliated stations have exercised their right to preempt programming and will continue to do so without FCC intervention”, argues the house of mouse.

Before Kimmel, there were episodes of NYPD Blue and a broadcast of Saving Private Ryan that famously experienced affiliate preemption. It is rare, but it happens. “These and other examples make clear that the regime is working in compliance with the FCC’s rules and that no further regulatory intervention is warranted.” Disney says that Chairman Carr is warranted in enforcing the rules as long as they literally get to run the show.

Network affiliates feel differently. “The math is simple. If unchecked Network practices continue to threaten local stations’ ability to serve the public, more local stations will be forced to scale back or eliminate the type of news and local programming that viewers expect and rely on in communities throughout the nation,” they argue in their own filing.

All of this was lost on the committee. Instead, the Chairman’s words were turned into a threat. “I asked if you think it’s appropriate for you to use your position to threaten companies”, Klobuchar pressed. “And this incident with Kimmel wasn’t an isolated event. You’ve launched investigations into every major broadcast network except Fox; is that correct?”

Carr was too polite to point out that Fox News is a cable channel, not a broadcast network. “I don’t know if that’s true or not”, he replied. “We do have investigations going on NPR and PBS. We have a number of investigations that are ongoing. I think if you step back over the years, I think the FCC has walked away from enforcing the public interest standard, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

I asked Grok AI for information on Amy Klobuchar’s financial picture. According to data sourced from OpenSecrets.org, her campaign coffers have received a total of $349,403 in individual contributions from the entertainment industry in 2024 and 2025. If true, this would explain her hostility better than any concerns about free speech.

Hollywood is experiencing a catastrophic decline in profitability — again, largely because of streaming, which replaces physical media — and the people who work in the industry are freaking out, right now. Jimmy Kimmel Live! is a late night program, part of a genre that was always intended to platform movie stars with new films to go see. But the film industry is dying and Kimmel languishes in the ratings. The old profit model is broken and everyone is feeling it.

Just as she had tried to get the FCC to treat Fox News, a cable channel, as a broadcast network, Klobuchar bizarrely tried to enlist Chairman Carr in condemnation of President Trump’s tweet about the murder of Rob Reiner. Without acknowledging Kimmel’s lie about the killer of Charlie Kirk that ignited the firestorm in the first place, the Senator was trying to frame the two situations as equivalent, and the FCC’s powers in both situations as somehow equal.

“Senator, look, Democrats on this dais are accusing me of engaging in censorship”, Carr answered. “And now, you’re trying to encourage me to police speech on the internet. I’m simply not going to do it.” He might have dwelt on the topic of Democrats gleefully ‘jawboning’ the president on social media once upon a time, but Chairman Carr is just too diplomatic to score petty political points like that.

“Broadcast TV is fundamentally different than any other forms of media, whether it’s cable or podcast or soapbox or man on the street”, Carr reminded the Senators. “There’s a public-trustee model that Congress has set up.” Jimmy Kimmel has a First Amendment right to speak, but nowhere in the Bill of Rights is he guaranteed a late night broadcast television network program.

“There was no threat in there to revoke a license”, Carr replied to Sen. Tammy Baldwin as he weathered another attack on his statement supporting the affiliates during the Kimmel controversy. Rated true, again. According to Grok, which spent a few minutes demonstrating why so many people are worried about AI, Sen. Baldwin has received $617,205 from people in the entertainment industry since 2019.

Grok AI says that Sen. Cruz, who presented the most moderate position — free speech as the default for everyone — has not received significant contributions from the entertainment industry. Given the number of movie stars who endorsed Kamala Harris, sometimes for cash, it should not be surprising that the influence works both ways, nor should we be shocked at the partisan lean.

As we now know, and should have expected, it was the talent agencies that leaned on Disney to un-suspend Kimmel. Sinclair and Nexstar relented and stopped pre-empting Kimmel to continue their dispute through the FCC. Bob Iger was susceptible to pressure from his peers and showrunners. Iger did not even need to think twice when he fired Roseanne Barr from her own show for a tweet, or fire Gina Carano from the most popular role on Lucasfilm’s marquee streaming series.

No one in Los Angeles would ever do this for a conservative actor who got in similar trouble. They have declared Jimmy Kimmel untouchable, but they cannot make him profitable, and that is what the shouting is really all about.