Network TV is a living fossil, a relic of my boyhood when technology limited the number of stations available in any given area. By the time I was a teenager, commercially viable cable TV was coming in and the network monopoly was beginning to break down. With streaming over the internet, the networks are bleeding out over gone for good audiences and ever shrinking ad revenue. The Kimmel debacle underlines that network affiliates do not have to accept airing unpopular, and unprofitable, programs, simply because the network heads say so. Affiliates have long exercised that option, albeit sparingly. I think affiliate owners are no longer willing to lose ad revenue simply because network heads, for political reasons, wish to air money losing shows like Kimmel, and the realization that they can permanently part ways with a program that is harming their bottom line may be the most important result of the Kimmel affair.
Update:
Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliates, say that their stations will also pre-empt Kimmel’s show.
Sinclair. Thank you. Yes. Bravery and common decency. Something that isn’t so common anymore, unfortunately.
Sinclair owns the ABC affiliate in DC (Channel 7). Pass the popcorn.
The last network show I watched was Person of Interest. Before that, CSI Miami before it got too silly.
The four networks have lacked creativity, originality and substance for decades. Old shows get rebooted and people have grown tired of The Message. Network news is a bad joke.
Disney is in a prison of its own making. It’s senior management lives in an echo chamber. Hey, keep paying Kimmel making a fool of himself. The stockholders will tire of wasting money on Dim Jim.
It’s only in the enclosed world of Hollywood and politics that anyone gives a darn about Kimmel. I remind friends all the time, when they get excited about stuff like Kimmel being taken off the air, that in a country of 346 million people, only 1.7 million watch this guy, and that’s on a good day. To my calculations that’s 0.4913% of the population. Yeah, big threat to free speech, not!
They played the narrative that people were cancelling their Disney subscriptions and Disney caved in. Rubbish. This is politics being played out in real time and I don’t think the right is backing down anytime soon. The momentum has shifted.
Why would a press release from a network be any more reliable than ” network news”?
I don’t believe the “back by popular demand” schtick.
I don’t see any courage in this story, or rather this substory within the Kirk story. Kimmel is in a fading industry, and probably wanted the same kind of attention Colbert has been getting for his firing. Hollywood celebrities signed a petition written by the ACLU. Companies made choices based on competing pressures. The head of an agency tenuously extended the scope of the government. I can’t muster up an attaboy for anyone.
He will return to a slight bump in the ratings until his previous unrelenting viewership decline resumes. His contract will end in 2026 and won’t be renewed.
I don’t want to hear the godless left complain that Kimmel’s cancellation was a threat to free speech when their godless politicians urged Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor all of us. Under the Biden years, I was being placed in Facebook and Twitter jail every other month. Frack the Democrats! Factio Democratica delenda est!
Forgive my nerding for a moment.
Google’s “admission” reminds me of BabyDoll, a villain from the 90s Batman animated series.
“I didn’t mean to…”
Jimmy Kimmel is the Mark.Shea.of.network television.