As I had made plans for Thursday of last week, I was writing last week’s column on Wednesday and was about 90% done when I heard the news about the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show. My planned column was not time sensitive, but this story was clearly happening in real time with one domino falling after the other.
In the space of a few hours, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had made comments on a podcast that were clearly aimed at ABC and its affiliates. ABC, of course, is Kimmel’s employer, and the affiliates are those who broadcast his show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take actions, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Now, anyone who has ever used that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” line, and I have on many occasions, knows this is a threat of escalation. Nexstar and Sinclair, each being owners of a number of ABC affiliates, quickly announced they would preempt Kimmel’s show. The fact that both companies are awaiting FCC approval to expand their business is no doubt purely coincidental. Their decisions, which displayed a nimbleness generally not found in large corporations, are a testament to their agility and not any possibility of collusion with the FCC.
Having removed my tongue from my check, we can look at what then happened over at ABC. Or rather, at Disney, which owns ABC. Now, I’ll skate out on thin ice with a football analogy. The best option when an offensive drive is failing is to cede possession and move the ball forward to push the opposing team as far back on the field as possible, allowing the defense to be in a better position. That’s what Disney chose—to “indefinitely preempt” the Kimmel show. They punted.
To strain this analogy even further, their defense was not anything internal to Disney or ABC. The only thing that could save Jimmy Kimmel from the politically motivated aggression of the FCC and the corporate interests (spelled G R E E D) was a public backlash.
To make this all about me, I had to decide whether to write about this evolving story with what little was known publicly on Wednesday. And like the guys at Disney, I punted and stayed with my original plan while knowing that this would most likely be the subject of this week’s column.
Checking in to social media on Thursday, I saw a stream of support for what was referred to as Kimmel’s firing or cancellation and a stream of folks announcing the cancellation of their streaming services owned by Disney. Apres that, le deluge.
The site to record those cancellations crashed. Hollywood balked. Ted Cruz weighed in on Friday, blasting Brendan Carr saying “what he said there is dangerous as hell.” The paradigm shifted dramatically and quickly from being about Jimmy Kimmel to being about freedom of speech.
By Saturday, it was being reported that talks between Disney and Kimmel were underway to bring the show back with more coverage to that effect on Sunday, which was the day of Charlie Kirk’s “memorial.” (The less said about that event, the better.) The announcement that Kimmel would be back on Tuesday was made Monday morning.
Disney found itself between a rock and a hard place and chose neither the most cowardly nor the most courageous option. No doubt there will be a price to be paid for that, as some consumers will not return to the fold.
While we know that they work, the traditional form of boycotts is a rather passive refusal to do business with a certain company. This was not passive—it required an active cancellation of an existing relationship involving an ongoing flow of actual money. That’s why it worked and worked so fast.
But most importantly, the vast majority of us can only assert our very limited influence over the big stuff when we vote. But what happened this week demonstrates the power of people coming together to stand against their government and the corporations that too often collude with it.The lesson therein is far bigger than any of the personalities that had a part in what we have seen in America this week. If we forget it, we do so at our own peril.
