ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air this week after the host’s monologue about Charlie Kirk’s tragic killing crossed a line for a number of station groups and a top federal regulator. Nexstar and Sinclair led the charge to preempt the program, citing remarks they called offensive and irresponsible, and ABC moved quickly to avoid a wider advertising and affiliate revolt.
This was not some spontaneous corporate panic; FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly denounced Kimmel’s comments and even hinted at regulatory consequences, which put immense pressure on network and local executives already juggling mergers and FCC approvals. When the chairman of the agency overseeing broadcast licenses signals displeasure, media companies make business decisions — and that’s exactly what happened here.
Americans watching all of this saw a predictable pattern: a liberal late-night host says something nasty about conservative Americans, the audience and advertisers react, and the network gets squeezed until it folds. Stephen Colbert’s program faced similar consequences just weeks earlier, so this is not an isolated incident but a reminder that the media is not above accountability when it descends into cheap, partisan bloodletting.
Fox’s Jesse Watters put it bluntly: this could have been entirely avoided if Kimmel had exercised basic decency or simply declined to weaponize a grieving family’s loss for partisan claptrap. Watters is right to call out the left’s reflexive politicization of tragedy — Americans are tired of elites who mock and blame rather than show restraint and respect.
Let’s be clear about who pays for the media circus: advertisers and local station owners, not the coastal commentators who live in a bubble of immunity until it suddenly all comes crashing down. When advertisers threaten to pull spending and viewers flood station inboxes, companies do what responsible businesspeople do — they protect their brands and their shareholders, not the sanctimony of a late-night celebrity.
Conservatives should not celebrate this as censorship; we should welcome accountability and expect the same standards applied across the board. If the media wants the privilege of national broadcast, it also accepts the responsibility to stop poisoning American civic life with spiteful, divisive rhetoric. The lesson for every network and host is simple: stop treating the public like props in your culture-war theater, or be prepared to answer for it.
