All hell broke loose when television network ABC announced that they will be taking Jimmy Kimmel Live off air. There was no farewell, no explanation, just a tug at the plug, and the show was cancelled. However, that decision did not last long, and Disney, who owns the network, announced on Monday that the show will be coming back the very next day.
The news of the show’s reinstatement spread as quickly as news of its cancellation did, and The Late Show host Stephen Colbert weighed in on the whole thing. During the opening monologue of the show’s latest episode, Stephen addressed what had happened and said, “We do so many of these (episodes) every year, and whenever I can, I try to start them off with some good news. Just a few hours before filming, we got word that our long national late-nightmare is now over. Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live is going back on air starting Tuesday night. This is wonderful news for my dear friend Jimmy and his staff. Plus now that Jimmy is not cancelled, I get to enjoy this (Emmy Award). I am the only martyr of late-night TV once more, unless CBS wants to announce something? Huh? Still no?”
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He continued, “Here is why Disney folded. After Jimmy was cancelled, Google searches for ‘cancel Disney+’ and ‘Hulu’ spiked. Disney put Kimmel back on because you, the American people, were upset.” He poked fun at Senator Ted Cruz and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for the former’s take on the cancellation and for the latter’s unfortunate experience of getting too many complaints because people thought they were ABC.
Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension
All of this hit the fan when Jimmy Kimmel addressed the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel, who had already expressed his condolences on Kirk’s death, talked about the assassination on a different episode and said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
FCC chair Brendan Carr responded to the comments and basically threatened ABC to take the show off air. His statement saying, “You can do this the hard way or the easy way,” went viral, and many people, including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, reacted to the news. Later, Carr even tried to blame Kimmel’s numbers for the cancellation of his show.
