A Late Night Without Jimmy Kimmel - How Politics, Media Power and the Limits of Satire Collide

It was a bombshell that shook the American media landscape on Wednesday evening: ABC announced that it would suspend the broadcast of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" indefinitely. The move came only hours after the Nexstar Media Group - the largest operator of local television stations in the United States and a partner of ABC - had declared it would no longer air the show. The reason is remarks by the talk show host about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which have since sparked a national controversy. On Monday, Kimmel had sharply criticized the political exploitation of the crime in his monologue. The supporters of Donald Trump, he said, were trying "by all means to portray this young man who murdered Charlie Kirk as a leftist in order to score political points from it." Between finger-pointing and mourning, Kimmel said, the full absurdity of the current political climate was revealed. With this jab at the "MAGA gang," he not only provoked Trump supporters but also the regulatory authority itself. Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a Trump appointee, reacted unusually harshly. In an interview, he spoke of "the sickest conduct possible" and told the broadcasters: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." Carr suggested that the FCC could even review the licenses of ABC stations if Disney - the parent company of the network - failed to act. He claimed that Kimmel had deliberately misled the public about fundamental facts and stressed that broadcasters with an FCC license were obligated to "operate in the public interest."

Under this pressure, Nexstar was the first to pull the plug. "Kimmel's comments about the death of Charlie Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a moment when our national debate is already poisoned," said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar's broadcasting division. It was "not in the public interest" to give the host a platform at this time. The show would therefore be replaced with other programming in all ABC-affiliated markets. Shortly afterward, ABC itself confirmed: "Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be suspended indefinitely." The network did not want to provide further details. The decision is part of a series of interventions that have shaken late-night television in the United States in recent months. Earlier this year, Paramount had canceled the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" - officially for financial reasons, though observers accused the company of trying to accommodate Trump-friendly authorities in order to secure a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance. Now it hits Kimmel, another well-known critic of the president. Trump himself promptly reacted on his platform Truth Social and congratulated ABC for the "courage to finally do what had to be done."

The case shows how closely intertwined media business, political power, and regulatory threats have become. While Republicans like Utah Governor Spencer Cox described the alleged perpetrator Tyler Robinson as "deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology," and prosecutors presented text messages in which Robinson allegedly denounced Kirk's "hatred," Kimmel had attacked the rapid political framing of the crime by Trump's camp. That a satirist now effectively disappears from the screen for such words reveals not only the vulnerability of late-night television but also raises fundamental questions about press freedom and political influence. Nexstar emphasized in its statement that it wanted to "give cooler heads room so that respectful and constructive dialogue can once again be possible." Yet the move above all reinforces the impression that the boundaries of what can be said are being drawn more narrowly - not for journalistic, but for power-political reasons. If even the stage of satire becomes a battleground for regulatory threats and corporate interests, far more is at stake than just a late-night show.