Disney’s ABC is taking Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show off the air indefinitely amid a controversy over his recent comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said, declining to share any further details.
A representative for Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The abrupt announcement came Wednesday evening after at least one major operator of ABC-affiliated stations said it would not broadcast the show “for the foreseeable future.”
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The operator, Nexstar, said it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
During his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel suggested Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. “The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize 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.”
The ABC late-night host’s remarks constituted “the sickest conduct possible,” FCC chair Brendan Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday. Carr suggested his FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to force Disney to punish Kimmel.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Carr added that the broadcasters, including ABC, “have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Carr attacked Kimmel as “talentless” and suggested the late-night comedian’s comments displayed “some sort of desperate irrelevance.” Disney and ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This was not the first time Carr has gone after ABC in recent months. In July, the Trump appointee told Fox News that long-running daytime talk show “The View” is “now in the crosshairs of this administration” over co-host Joy Behar’s scathing criticism of President Trump.
But Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner at the FCC, wrote on X that while “an inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control,” the Trump administration “is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”
“To surrender our right to speak freely is to accept that those in power, not the people, will set the boundaries of debate that define a free society,” Gomez wrote.
The Center for American Rights, which has previously lodged bias complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS, on Wednesday filed a complaint with the FCC over Kimmel’s comments, writing that “it is no defense to say that Kimmel was engaging in satire or late-night comedy rather than traditional news.”
“ABC’s affiliates need to step up and hold ABC accountable as a network for passing through material that fails to respect the public-interest standard to which they are held,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, wrote in the complaint. “Disney as ABC’s corporate owner needs to act directly to correct this problem.”
Kimmel has also been a frequent target of President Trump’s ire. Shortly after CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show — a move Carr publicly celebrated — Trump suggested that “Next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel.”
