“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to ABC on Tuesday night, the network said Monday, ending a nearly weeklong standoff over the late-night talk show.
But not all of ABC’s affiliated stations will be carrying Kimmel’s comeback show. Sinclair, one of the country’s biggest owners of local TV stations, said its ABC affiliates will preempt the show “beginning Tuesday night.” Sinclair said it will air news programming in the time slot instead.
“Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return,” a Sinclair spokesperson told CNN.
Sinclair’s conservative owners condemned Kimmel last week and contributed to ABC parent Disney’s decision to pull the show from the airwaves temporarily.
The Kimmel controversy erupted last week after conservatives criticised a Kimmel monologue comment on Monday about the MAGA responses to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said the MAGA movement was trying to score political points by trying to prove that the 22-year-old suspect accused of killing Kirk is not one of its own.
“The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
On Wednesday, two days after the monologue aired, President Trump’s close ally atop the FCC, Brendan Carr, publicly suggested Kimmel should be suspended and invoked the FCC’s oversight of local TV stations.
Within a matter of hours two big station groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, signalled that they would preempt Kimmel’s show locally, and then ABC suspended the show altogether, a stunning move that started a national debate about government interference and freedom of speech.
Disney tried to explain its decision-making in a Monday afternoon statement announcing Kimmel’s return.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the Disney statement said. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
Kimmel is planning to address the controversy in his monologue on Tuesday night, a source familiar with Kimmel’s plans told CNN. (CNN)
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