“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” To Return This Week
Last week, Disney announced that it would be pausing the hit talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely, following backlash from a comment regarding the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, which resulted in ABC affiliates NexStar and Sinclair threatening Disney with not airing the show and the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr hinting that ABC may lose its broadcast license if it doesn’t tow the line.
The reaction to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” being pulled off the air has been widespread on the internet and in Hollywood, with Disney+ and Hulu subscribers threatening to cancel their subscriptions unless the show returns and Disney stands up for free speech.
We’ve seen vast numbers of online comments across every Disney-related social media post calling out Disney on their decision, but today, it’s been announced that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return on Tuesday evening.
In a statement by the Walt Disney Company, it confirmed:
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
Disney has been getting lots of pressure from the creative community, with hundreds of actors coming out publicly against the decision to pause the show, and at a premiere event for a new documentary last night, none of the musicians would perform as a protest to Disney’s decision.
It’s unclear if “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will also be available on NexStar and Sinclair affiliate channels, but the return will mean new episodes will be available on Hulu, Hulu On Disney+ and YouTube.
Roger’s Take: The longer this situation continued to drag on, the worse it was getting for Disney as it tried to find a way out of the situation, but it looks like they’ve been able to make an agreement to get the show back on the air. It’ll be interesting to see how Jimmy Kimmel addresses the situation on his first show back and whether he will apologise for his comments. This might help bring down the heat on Disney, but no doubt it might take a while for this to completely settle down.
What do you think of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” returning? Let me know on social media!
