Disney on Monday said it would return comedian Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television from yesterday, six days after his show was threatened with a regulatory probe and suspended over comments he made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Disney’s move to restore Jimmy Kimmel Live! to its ABC network represented the highest-profile challenge yet from a communications company to an escalating crackdown by US President Donald Trump on his perceived media critics through litigation and warnings of regulatory action.
The U-turn came after several prominent conservatives, including US Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who leads oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), joined Democrats in criticizing the head of the agency for threatening retaliation against ABC.
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Disney also faced pressure from consumers rallying against Kimmel’s suspension by canceling their subscriptions to the Disney+ streaming subscription service.
Kimmel drew outrage from conservatives for saying that Trump’s supporters were desperate to characterize Kirk’s accused assassin “as anything other than one of them” and for trying to “score political points” from his murder.
The comments came in the opening monologue of Kimmel’s broadcast on Monday last week, five days after Kirk, an influential Trump ally, author and radio-podcast host, was shot dead while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.
In the wake of threats of investigation, fines and broadcast license revocations from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and a boycott by many of ABC’s affiliate stations, Disney on Wednesday last week said it was shutting down production of Kimmel’s program indefinitely.
In announcing Kimmel’s return, Disney said it had initially suspended the show “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”
Disney added that it found Kimmel’s comments about Kirk “were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” but the entertainment giant stopped short of an outright apology.
Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment cochair Dana Walden spoke with Kimmel over the weekend and reached a decision on Monday to return Kimmel to the air, two people familiar with the matter said.
Another source at the company said Disney was feeling pressure from a campaign urging consumers to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions in protest.
Google searches for “how to cancel Disney+” spiked to a 12-month high, according to Google Trends.
Kimmel is expected to address the issue when his show returns, the sources said.
Disney’s reversal was likely based on business considerations rather than the desire to uphold free speech rights, as enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, said Susan Campbell, a media studies professor at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.
“Consumers were exercising their own First Amendment rights and ending their subscriptions to the company’s streaming services,” Campbell said.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the panel, praised Disney for “its courage in the face of clear government intimidation.”
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