The outrage machine has moved on.
In a classic Friday news dump move, Sinclair announced that it will end its unofficial boycott of Jimmy Kimmel and will once again broadcast the comedian’s late-night show, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ to its ABC affiliate broadcast stations, ending its completely principled and not at all politically motivated stance to pre-empt the show after all of two days.
“Our objective throughout this process has been to ensure that programming remains accurate and engaging for the widest possible audience,” the company said in a statement. “We take seriously our responsibility as local broadcasters to provide programming that serves the interests of our communities, while also honoring our obligations to air national network programming.”
Sinclair—which operates 30 ABC affiliate stations in 27 markets, including cities like Portland, Baltimore, and Minneapolis—announced last week that it would choose to air “news programming” in place of Kimmel’s show, which returned to the air Tuesday after a brief hiatus. The program, which was briefly suspended by ABC after Kimmel made a frankly pretty innocuous comment about the political ideology of the person who allegedly shot and killed conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Utah earlier this month.
Sinclair, along with fellow media conglomerate Nexstar, announced they would pull Kimmel’s show from the air following a statement from Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr, who warned broadcasters, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and said, “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
