ABC

Jimmy Kimmel Live was pulled off the air in 2025 after comments Kimmel made about the Charlie Kirk shooting drew pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr and led affiliate groups Nexstar and Sinclair to preemptively drop the show, before Disney reinstated it days later amid public backlash. That controversy landed on a network otherwise leaning on Abbott Elementary's sustained critical success, Monday Night Football's ESPN synergy, and legacy unscripted staples like The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars to hold its schedule together.

Our take: the speed and bluntness of the Kimmel suspension — driven by affiliate groups reacting to regulatory pressure rather than Disney's own editorial judgment — was a genuinely alarming precedent for broadcast content being shaped by threats to affiliates' retransmission leverage, not advertiser blowback or ratings, and the reinstatement didn't undo how exposed that made the whole affiliate system look.

Watch how ABC and Disney handle late-night and topical programming heading into the next election cycle — whether Kimmel's show pulls back on political material or doubles down will tell you whether that pressure campaign actually worked long-term or just won one news cycle.