How the FCC Chair Unplugged Jimmy Kimmel—and Why It Didn’t Last

In a dizzying September sequence, Disney, the owner of ABC, suspended Jimmy Kimmel for comments he made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting—and then unsuspended him one week later. Disney acted hours after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr slammed Kimmel and called upon Disney to do something. But soon after bowing to Carr’s pressure, Disney reversed itself. What happened? With Carr set to testify before Congress on Dec. 17 for the first time since the Kimmel contretemps, the saga is worth reexamining.

As with so much in the Trump era, the relationship between the FCC and broadcasters is in flux. Carr is more willing to flex regulatory muscle than a typical Republican FCC chair, and he’s backed by a president famously eager to play favorites and suppress his critics. But in the Kimmel saga, they ran up against something they hadn’t encountered in 2025: effective counterpressure from key parts of civil society and Congress.

Regulating the Airwaves

The FCC licenses broadcast television and radio stations—in other words, those that transmit over the airwaves, but not cable, satellite television, or streaming platforms. Networks like ABC hold licenses to the extent they own stations in local markets. ABC owns eight television stations, including stations in each of the top three, and in six of the top nine, U.S. television markets. (CBS owns 15 television stations, NBC owns 11, and FOX owns 29, of which 18 are affiliated with the FOX Network.)

The Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, set up a licensing scheme for radio stations—later expanded to television—because far more entities wanted to use the electromagnetic spectrum than could do so without interfering with other stations. The act authorized the FCC to award licenses (and renewals) to applicants that demonstrate they will advance “the public interest”—a nebulous standard that has resisted definition ever since.

The FCC has oscillated between strong regulation of licensees in the public interest and choosing to apply a lighter hand, depending on the disposition of its presidentially appointed leadership. In 1960, the FCC published a program statement that listed 14 “major elements usually necessary to the public interest,” which ranged from “opportunity for local self-expression” to “educational programs” to “sports programs” and beyond. By the 1980s, however, enthusiasm for regulation had waned, and the FCC preferred to let market forces operate to ensure that the public interest was served. One chairman, only half in jest, referred to television as a mere “toaster with pictures.”

Lurking in the background, of course, is the First Amendment. In Red Lion v. FCC (1969), the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment challenge to the so-called fairness doctrine, an FCC rule that required broadcasters to give fair coverage to each side of an issue. The Court reasoned that the technological “scarcity” of public broadcasting—the fact that “there are substantially more individuals who want to broadcast than there are frequencies to allocate”—justified the imposition of governmental constraints that would violate the First Amendment in other contexts. In upholding the fairness doctrine, the Court emphasized that it did not grant the FCC free rein to regulate all content—noting pointedly that its decision did not address a “refusal to permit the broadcaster to carry a particular program.” Indeed, the Communications Act itself provides that it shall not be “construed to give the Commission the power of censorship over the [broadcast] communications or signals transmitted by any [broadcast] station, and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech by means of [over-the-air] broadcast communication.” And 25 years after Red Lion, the Supreme Court noted that “our cases have recognized that Government regulation over the content of broadcast programming must be narrow, and that broadcast licensees must retain abundant discretion over programming choices.”

The FCC abolished the fairness doctrine in 1987, as part of its Reagan-era deregulatory turn. But other content rules and policies remain. These cover obscene, indecent, and profane content; children’s programming; sponsorship identification; contests and lotteries; the provision of equal time to competing candidates for office in certain contexts; and—more on this later—news distortion and hoaxes. While these rules may be partial manifestations of the public interest standard, the FCC has never purported that they represent the sum total of the standard.

If each station owner had no other business with the FCC, and never intended to sell its station, our analysis could stop here. But we do not live in that world. Whenever a station owner wants to sell, buy another station, or merge with another company, it needs FCC approval. Likewise, FCC rules limit the number of stations that a single entity may own—although certain rules are waivable, and others are currently under review. Furthermore, in a world where vast conglomerates own networks (and therefore broadcast stations), the FCC can exert leverage via its licensing and license transfer requirements in a wide range of other areas under its jurisdiction, including cable television, broadband, and commercial mobile wireless.

The Rise of Brendan Carr

President Trump made Carr an FCC commissioner in 2017, after naming as chair Ajit Pai, who like most Republican-appointed chairs favored deregulation. Near the end of Trump’s first term, Carr became a media hound, apparently auditioning for the chairmanship. He kept his eyes on the prize during Biden’s presidency: Despite serving as an FCC commissioner, Carr authored the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. It worked: Two weeks after winning the election, Trump announced that he would appoint Carr as chairman, a designation that (unlike his earlier appointment to become a commissioner) does not require Senate approval.

Shortly after becoming chairman, Carr reopened a frivolous complaint that a conservative organization had filed in October 2024, and which the FCC had already rejected, against a CBS-owned station for allegedly engaging in news distortion to benefit Kamala Harris. The complaint charged that CBS deceptively edited an answer in a 60 Minutes interview with Harris in a way that differed from a longer, less focused answer that aired on Face the Nation as a promo for the 60 Minutes segment. (Carr also reopened separate baseless complaints, from the same complainant, against ABC and NBC.) Never mind that, at the time the complaint was filed, Carr had described news distortion as “a very, very narrow rule at the FCC. In almost every case, it doesn’t apply because it could get into sort of editorial decisions that are protected by the First Amendment.” And as the Wall Street Journal editorialized about the differing versions, this was plainly an exercise of “editorial judgment, not an instance of splicing footage to create a misleading response that never happened.”

In the wake of the October 2024 complaint, Trump had sued CBS in federal court in Texas, arguing with equal frivolity that the editing somehow violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act. Soon after Trump’s electoral victory, Carr said he was “pretty confident” that the 60 Minutes complaint was “likely to arise” in the FCC’s review of an attempted merger between Paramount, the owner of CBS, and Skydance. He later insisted that Trump’s lawsuit was a separate issue, but Paramount appeared to believe otherwise.

In July, Paramount announced that it would pay $16 million to settle Trump’s meritless lawsuit. (Trump has claimed, without confirmation, that the deal also includes “$20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs, or similar Programming.”) Later in the month, frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert—who had called the settlement “a big fat bribe”—announced that his show was not being renewed. Before July was out, the FCC approved the Paramount-Skydance merger. Some observers found the timing suspicious. Shortly before FCC approval, Skydance pledged to name an ombudsman to evaluate complaints of bias at CBS News; it did not seem a coincidence that the person hired for the role had spent decades leading a conservative think tank, nor that Free Press founder Bari Weiss was soon named editor in chief of CBS News. In a statement announcing FCC approval of the transaction, Carr hailed the new company for “adopt[ing] measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media”—and for agreeing to eliminate Paramount’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

In other words, Carr executed over the course of nine months a scheme that both shifted rightward a leading news outlet and enriched his boss. Not for nothing did a Democratic predecessor as FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, admit his “tremendous respect for Brendan Carr’s tactical abilities.”

And sometimes Carr gets results much faster. Shortly after the election, he questioned a broadcast company’s post-bankruptcy restructuring involving ownership ties to George Soros. In February, he launched an investigation of a San Francisco radio station owned by that company for allegedly broadcasting the locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and unmarked vehicles engaged in undercover enforcement activity. He demanded that the station explain “how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations”—and popped up on Fox & Friends to discuss the investigation and thank President Trump for carrying out “an unprecedented number of deportations.” Rather than defend its coverage, the station reportedly removed the story from its website.

Carr’s politically charged commentary has not always led to consequences—at least not yet. In an odd April tweet, he slammed Comcast, the owner of NBC, for being insufficiently critical of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador and for months refused to return to the U.S. “Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public—implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular ‘Maryland man,’” Carr tweeted. “When the truth comes out, they ignore it. Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it.”

Right on cue, the conservative group that accused 60 Minutes of news distortion filed a complaint against NBC—and, for good measure, ABC and CBS—for distorting the news with regard to Abrego Garcia. (Carr’s tweet just happened to be posted one day after Trump called Comcast “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting”—and the same month Carr wore a gold pin in the shape of Trump’s profile to meetings with Congress and the Department of Justice.)

When Kimmel made a passing Kirk reference, Carr saw a new opportunity. Five days after Kirk’s Sept. 10 murder, Kimmel addressed the response to the arrest of a suspect: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He then showed a video of Trump answering a question about how he was “holding up” in the wake of Kirk’s death. “I think very good,” said Trump, immediately pivoting to bragging about work on the new White House ballroom. “He’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Kimmel joked, and then launched into a series of jibes about the Trump administration.

Two days later, Carr did a live podcast with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson. (This transcript is almost entirely accurate.) He blasted Kimmel’s monologue as “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and noted that broadcasters are licensed to serve in the public interest. “Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr warned. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Asked what ABC should do, Carr said, “I mean, obviously, look, there’s calls for Kimmel to be fired. I think, you know, you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. And again, you know, the FCC is gonna have remedies that we could look at.” He said the public interest standard “means you can’t be engaging in a pattern of news distortion. We have a rule on the book that interprets a public interest standard that says news distortion is something that is prohibited. Likewise, we have a rule that addresses broadcast hoaxes.”

Carr then suggested that local television stations should reason as follows: “We are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we, we licensed broadcasters, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”

Law Versus Power

Carr’s references to news distortion and broadcast hoaxes made little sense. Contrary to what Carr told Johnson, the news distortion doctrine has never been formally adopted as a rule. Rather, it has been articulated in a series of FCC decisions, starting in 1969, responding to complaints about news programs. According to two studies of the history of news distortion complaints, the FCC has found distortion in only eight cases, and only once since 1982. Because the FCC has never promulgated a specific rule addressing news distortion, it lacks authority to impose fines, and can only revoke a license or issue an admonishment. On three occasions, the FCC revoked a broadcasting license due to violations that included news distortion; in two cases the FCC issued probationary short-term license renewals, which were followed by full renewals; and three times the FCC just issued admonishments.

For several reasons, Kimmel’s comment did not constitute news distortion as the FCC has used that term. Most fundamentally, as Duke law professor Stuart Benjamin has noted, the FCC’s news distortion standard “has been applied only to news shows (which of course Kimmel’s show is not).” Furthermore, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has summarized—in language the FCC quotes on its website—FCC decisions indicate that, to constitute news distortion, (a) “the distortion must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report”; (b) it must be “deliberately intended to slant or mislead,” rather than “mere inaccuracy or difference of opinion”; and (c) there must be “‘extrinsic evidence,’ that is, evidence other than the broadcast itself, such as written or oral instructions from station management, outtakes, or evidence of bribery.”

Kimmel’s quip failed to qualify on all three counts. First, Carr took issue with a single sentence in a lengthy monologue—definitionally “minor or incidental.” Second, there was no bad intent. Kimmel suggested that the defendant likely was a Trump supporter. But he was merely expressing his own opinion, in the absence of any hard evidence regarding the defendant’s politics. Kimmel’s comment came days after the defendant’s grandmother said he came from a Republican family and one day before the authorities filed charging documents indicating that he had become left-leaning. While most commentators who expressed a view at the time assumed that the defendant was likely left of center, Kimmel was not alone in seeming to speculate otherwise. And third, no evidence has been adduced that anyone—licensee, show management, network—acted with any improper motive.

Carr’s other allegation made even less sense. The FCC’s proscription against broadcast hoaxes—which, unlike the news distortion policy, has been promulgated as a rule—applies to licensees that (a) broadcast false information about a crime or catastrophe, where (b) the licensee knows the information is false, (c) it is foreseeable that broadcasting the information will cause “substantial public harm,” and (d) such harm actually occurs. Such public harm “must begin immediately, and cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties.” This bears no resemblance to what Kimmel did. He did not broadcast “false information”—he simply speculated about the defendant’s motive in a way that subsequently was contradicted by the charging documents. Nor was there any chance that “substantial public harm,” as defined by the rule, could have (much less had) occurred.

Even so, the consequences were swift. Hours after Carr’s comments, Nexstar, a company that owns 32 ABC-affiliated stations, announced that “for the foreseeable future” it would not air Kimmel’s show due to his “offensive and insensitive” comments. Minutes later, ABC announced that the show would be “preempted indefinitely.” Sinclair, a company that has ABC stations in 30 markets, then upped the ante by announcing that, even if ABC reinstated Kimmel, Sinclair would not air his show “until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability.” Sinclair praised Carr’s comments and called upon Kimmel to “make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.” Carr, in turn, thanked Nexstar and Sinclair for pulling Kimmel.

Why did ABC take its own talent off the air? Because its owner, Disney, is a massive conglomerate with lots of business before the FCC. As noted above, ABC owns FCC-licensed television stations in lucrative media markets. Disney is well aware of the hoops that Carr made Paramount, the owner of CBS, jump through when it sought FCC approval of its merger with Skydance, which resulted in the transfer of dozens of CBS-owned station licenses to the new entity. And Disney has strong incentives to stay in the administration’s good graces for reasons beyond the FCC. For example, at the time it pulled Kimmel it was awaiting Department of Justice approval for two pending deals: to acquire a controlling stake in Fubo TV and to acquire the NFL Network and other NFL media assets in exchange for the NFL acquiring a 10 percent stake in ESPN. (The Department of Justice signed off on the Fubo TV deal at the end of October.)

That Carr was plainly wrong on the law was beside the point. The realistic risk to Disney was not that Carr would revoke, or deny a renewal of, a license based on a finding that Kimmel engaged in news distortion or violated the broadcast hoax rule. Rather, Disney feared that Carr would find other ways to get back at the company, in a manner that would be harder to prove or contest. The law was on Disney’s side; the power was on Carr’s.

For example: Carr has talked a lot about empowering local broadcasters at the expense of networks. He claims that stations owned by big corporations are less responsive to their communities. (Shortly after his appointment as chair, Carr sent Disney CEO Robert Iger a mildly menacing letter conveying these points and warning that he would be “monitoring” Disney’s contract negotiations with affiliated stations that it does not own.) Carr could, consistent with his pre-Kimmel rhetoric, find a way to deny a license renewal to an ABC-owned station, based on a finding that it did not serve the public interest in its programming by giving insufficient attention to the community’s needs. Would this be subject to judicial challenge? Certainly. Would ABC prevail? Perhaps. Was Disney so confident that it was willing to ignore Carr completely? No.

This also helps explain the actions of station owners Nexstar and Sinclair. As the nation’s largest owner of local broadcast stations, Nexstar needs FCC approval of its bid to acquire Tegna, the fourth largest. Sinclair launched in August a “strategic review” of its broadcast business with an eye to possible acquisitions or partnerships—and in November announced a bid for E.W. Scripps, which owns over 60 stations. Both companies hope the FCC will raise or eliminate caps on nationwide broadcast ownership. (Sinclair is also known for its politically conservative views.)

Disney was surrounded by cavers. Paramount caved. Nine law firms chose to—in the words of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—“bend the knee” to Trump. Many universities acquiesced to Trump’s demands. Corporations gave the government equity. And Disney itself had caved once before: Last year, Trump sued ABC, alleging that George Stephanopoulos defamed him when he imprecisely summarized the outcome of E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against him. While Stephanopoulos had made a factual error, observers felt Trump was unlikely to succeed—yet shortly after the election, ABC agreed to pay $15 million to settle the case.

But then something happened. The decision to suspend Kimmel met instant blowback. According to independent journalist Marisa Kabas, Disney suffered 1.7 million paid streaming cancellations across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN, 436 percent above baseline subscriber churn. Entertainers and performers slammed Disney, and Disney talent joined the boycott call and backed out of events. Hollywood unions protested the move, and 400 A-list celebrities signed an ACLU letter demanding Kimmel’s reinstatement. Local stations were reportedly inundated with calls from Kimmel fans as efforts sprouted to boycott their advertisers.

As expected, Democratic politicians denounced Carr. But so did many Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the FCC, said Carr’s commentary was “dangerous as hell” and “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’” Adopting a mobster accent, Cruz compared Carr to “a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.’” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called Carr’s comments “absolutely inappropriate.” Several other GOP senators, plus Cruz’s counterpart in the House, echoed their concerns.

Five days after pulling him off the air, Disney announced that Kimmel would return the following night. Disney said in a statement that it had suspended him because “some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive” and that a suspension was warranted “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.” In his first post-suspension opening monologue, Kimmel joked that Disney had demanded that he read a statement as a condition of allowing him to return: “To reactivate your Disney+ or Hulu account, open the Disney+ app on your smart TV or TV-connected device.” (Trump, predictably, threatened to sue ABC for bringing Kimmel back.) After three more nights of preemption, Nexstar and Sinclair brought back Kimmel’s show on their stations.

* * *

The blowback changed the incentives of Disney and the other actors. Facing a real threat to its business, Disney pulled the plug on pulling the plug. Nexstar and Sinclair risked their own blowback, plus possible violations of contractual limitations on the amount of network programming they are allowed to preempt.

Why was it different this time? Disney was both lucky and unlucky to have angry constituencies, in the form of customers and content creators, with the economic wherewithal to force the company to stiffen its spine and unbend its knee. Imagine if critical masses of law firm partners—or clients—had deserted law firms that signed deals with Trump. Or if university donors—or college-bound high school students—had pledged to have nothing to do with academic institutions that capitulated. The story of the Trump administration’s assault on free speech might have been different.

The unexpected public dissent by key Republicans in Congress—not a group known for its courage in 2025—may also have helped lift Disney out of a defensive crouch. It is hard to know why these legislators spoke up in this instance and not in others; it is unlikely they will do so in the future.

The First Amendment isn’t self-executing. Rights do not vindicate themselves. And the federal government has a knack for making private entities bend to its will in a way that isn’t always remediable through litigation. This is not solely a Trump phenomenon. The FCC has a rich tradition of “regulation by raised eyebrow”—subtle signaling of disapproval that effectively conveys a message and convinces regulated entities to take, or refrain from taking, certain actions.

The Trump administration’s assaults on freedom of speech, of course, have been anything but subtle. And Carr has not gone dormant. In November, he reposted Trump’s call for NBC to fire late-night host Seth Meyers. Four days later, he wrote NPR and PBS to inquire whether their stations aired a BBC report on Jan. 6 that BBC had subsequently determined to have been misleadingly edited to Trump’s detriment. He insinuated that any stations that did so may have violated the news distortion standard or the broadcast hoax rule. Carr may be eager to pick fights with Democratic senators when he testifies next week (but probably not with Sen. Cruz, who will chair the hearing).

The factors that brought Jimmy Kimmel back so quickly may be difficult to replicate, but they stand as proof of concept: Public pressure can help protect freedom of speech. The courts are not coming to save us, but we might be able to save ourselves.