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    Seth Meyers on Mamdani’s win: ‘The kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years’

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    Late-night hosts reacted to Democrats’ slate of wins across the country and Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City mayoral race.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers celebrated Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York mayoral race, becoming the first south Asian and Muslim mayor of the biggest city in the US, as well as New York’s first mayoral candidate since 1969 to receive more than a million votes.“This is the kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years,” said an enthusiastic Meyers. “I haven’t seen a crowd of New Yorkers this excited since the time the real Timotheé Chalamet stopped at a Timotheé Chalamet lookalike contest in Manhattan.“And if you thought Trump was bummed about the results before Mamdani’s speech, he probably felt even worse” when he heard Mamdani say: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!”“OK, first of all, you do not need to tell him to turn the volume up,” Meyers joked. “He’s a 79-year-old Fox News addict, you know the volume is maxed out.“Mamdani correctly calculated that standing up to Trump was a better political strategy than whatever this is,” he continued, cutting to a clip of the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – a New York establishment Democrat who did not endorse Mamdani – droning on about “Kentucky fried french fries” at a press conference.Asked who he voted for, Schumer declined to specify, instead saying: “Look, I voted, and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”“You’re the Democratic leader, and you won’t even say you voted for the Democratic nominee?” Meyers fumed. “Why are you treating it like a secret?“Things happen here, and they happen fast,” he said in a final ode to New York. “How fast? A dude who was polling at 1% a year ago was just elected mayor, and that’s what makes New York City great. And if you can’t hear the resounding message voters sent last night, then maybe you should” – to quote Mamdani – “turn the volume up.”Stephen Colbert“I don’t know about you guys, but tonight my heart is full of something I have not felt in almost a year, and that is … good?” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, his first since Democrats swept races across the country, offering a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration.“Today Democrats are walking around with a spring in their step like a divorced mom in her 40s whose new haircut just got her carded at two different bars,” he joked.Colbert also celebrated Mamdani’s win in New York. The 34-year-old state assemblyman “didn’t just defeat Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, he nut-punched New York’s fattest cats”, he said. “The billionaires had the knives out for Zohran, pumping massive amounts of cash into anti-Mamdani groups. I’m talking big-roll high-rollers,” including the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, son of Estée, who donated $2.6m to stop him; hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, who spent $1.75m on anti-Mamdani campaigns; and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who spent $2m.“So it’s a bad day for billionaires,” said Colbert. “Or as it’s also known, still a pretty good day! They’re still billionaires.”Speaking to supporters after clinching the victory, Mamdani offered a different political vision than the federal government in Washington. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he said.“And as always, the port authority will be the smell,” Colbert added.Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel cheered on the Democrats’ many wins on Tuesday. “We needed a big night,” he said. “Democrats have had fewer wins this year than the Jets.“This was not a good night for the president,” he continued. “Everything he touched was a loser. Trump hasn’t been this embarrassed since there was a Donald Trump Jr.”“But if you’re tired of all the losing, fear not! He’s got an excuse,” Kimmel said. “In fact, he’s got two of them.” Trump wrote on Truth Social: “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. AND SHUTDOWN. WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”“Now, if Republicans had won and he wasn’t on the ballot, would he take credit for that?” Kimmel responded. “Oh yes, he definitely would.”Trump then posted “… AND SO IT BEGINS!” – “which was either a response to Mamdani winning the mayoral race, or he just sat down on the toilet, I don’t know,” said Kimmel. “I mean, seriously, what is that supposed to mean? What would motivate him to post ‘and so it begins’ at almost midnight?”Kimmel then pivoted to the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 37 days. “Trump has been desperately trying to convince anyone who will listen that Democrats are responsible for the shutdown and that it has nothing to do with him trying to hide the Epstein files,” he said. “The gaslighting has reached a fever pitch, as Trump cuts off the supply of food to children, families, senior citizens, etc.”But, Kimmel said, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “wants you to know: just because they’re cutting off your food and want to cut off your health insurance, that doesn’t mean they don’t care”.As Johnson told reporters: “Every hardworking American in any place that’s missed a paycheck, anyone who has been made to suffer … anyone who is hurting, you have a home in the Republican party.”“Yes, you have a home in the Republican party!” Kimmel scoffed. “You’ll be living under the stairs like Harry Potter and you’re not allowed in the fridge, but you do have a home.” More

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      Jon Stewart on Trump’s taunts of an illegal third term: ‘We know he’s thought about it’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s taunts about an illegal third presidential term and his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.Jon StewartFrom his Monday night post on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart assessed the threat of Trump attempting to run for a third term as president, which is illegal under the 22nd amendment to the constitution.Asked by reporters for his thoughts on comments by Steve Bannon that he had a plan for such a campaign, Trump answered: “I would love to do it … I have my best numbers ever.”He also claimed, however: “I haven’t really thought about it.”“That’s the tell for whenever he’s asked about something that he is definitely going to do that is dubious legally, ethically or morally,” Stewart noted. “He says he hasn’t thought about it. But of course we know he’s thought about it because he already has the merch,” he added, pointing to “Trump 2028” hats that Trump has displayed in the Oval Office.“What’s interesting about Trump is he’s actually worked through the various scenarios of running for a third term that he has not thought about,” said Stewart, pointing to Trump’s further comments that “I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute.”“Too cute? No, that’s why you don’t go to Build-a-Bear as an adult,” Stewart replied. “Running as the vice-president to skirt the 22nd amendment isn’t cute. But he’s the kinda guy who’s like ‘I respect Americans too much to play games. If I’m going to run again, I’m going to rip off the constitution’s head and shit down its neck.’“Indications are very clear he’s gonna do it,” he continued, “because you don’t move into a house, knock down a wing and build a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom for the next guy.“Trump’s not a house-flipper,” he added. “He’s not Ellen. He’s in it for the long haul.”Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel returned from a weeklong family trip to Ireland with renewed perspective on his home country. “In case you’re wondering what people in other countries think about what’s going on here in our country, I’ll tell you: they’re worried about us,” he said. “They’re very worried. They’re worried about us in the same way you worry about a nephew who you maybe haven’t seen for a few years and he shows up at Thanksgiving missing all of his front teeth? That kind of worry.”People in Ireland, Kimmel reported, had a lot of questions for him about Trump, including: “Why is he knocking down part of the White House?”“I don’t know. Nobody knows,” he answered. “I don’t think he even knows.“Back here at home, the unrest continues to rage out of control. Antifa terrorists are destroying government – oh wait, that’s the White House,” Kimmel joked over a photo of the demolished East Wing. “That’s what Trump did on purpose, without permission, to the White House. I told you we should’ve made him put down a security deposit!”Nevertheless, Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended the move on NBC News: “I think this was a judgment call by the president. The president is a master builder. I don’t know, I assume that maybe parts of the East Wing, there could’ve been asbestos, there could’ve been mold.“There could’ve been some old Chinese food, could’ve been ghosts! We don’t know,” Kimmel joked. “All we know is that the only solution was to completely smash the whole place down. I wish the master builder would master-build in private like the rest of us do.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on the Trump 2028 hats seen on his desk during meetings with congressional Democrats.“It’s so weird to make a hat for a thing that can’t happen,” said Meyers. “Wearing a Trump 2028 hat is like wearing a hat that says Super Bowl champion New York Jets.”“So Trump put some hats on the desk during a meeting with Democrats,” he continued, “and the Democrats in attendance definitely thought it was weird.”As the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told CNN: “it was the strangest thing ever.”“Come on, the strangest thing ever? Don’t you live Brooklyn?” Meyers laughed. “If someone Rollerbladed into a Brooklyn deli wearing a full mermaid costume, the only thing anyone would say is ‘the usual, Jeff?’“It’s not even the strangest thing Trump has done,” he continued. “Not long before that meeting, he wandered on to the roof of the White House.“Think about how insane this is: this was supposed to be a meeting about keeping the government open, making sure troops get paid and families get nutrition assistance and air traffic controllers can do their jobs,” Meyers added. “And instead the president’s main interest was trolling.“Trump can’t help himself,” he concluded. “The Maga movement cares more about trolling libs than making government function, which is why he keeps going on about this unconstitutional third term.”Stephen Colbert“It was a beautiful day here in America because Donald Trump was out of the country,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. To start the week, Trump was on a “field trip” to Asia, where “he’s going to tear down the Great Wall and put up a ballroom,” Colbert quipped.The trip includes stops in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, where Trump danced to a marching band in a way that Colbert could only describe as “shuffling and swinging his wrists like a low-battery Chuck E Cheese robot”.In Japan, the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, reportedly planned to gift Trump a gold golf ball. “It is so sad to see how easy it is to butter up the president of the United States,” Colbert remarked. “OK quick, Trump’s visiting, what are we going to get him this time? Gold burger? Gold TV? Have we tried spray-painting a woman gold?”Colbert also touched on the fourth week of the ongoing government shutdown. “The longer it goes, the more used to having no government we get and then the less likely it is to ever end,” he said.The shutdown is now restricting military pay. But on Friday, an anonymous donor – later identified as Timothy Mellon – gifted $130m to pay troops during the shutdown. “I know that sounds nice, I get it, but I don’t like the idea of the armed forces having a private sponsor,” Colbert said. “I don’t want our next invasion to be code-named ‘Operation Chili’s New El Diablo Triple Dipper Rib Tips: Can You Stand the Heat?’” More

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      A rightwing late-night show may have bombed – but the funding behind it is no laughing matter

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      A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.“For too long, the late-night talkers on network tv have filled the airwaves with progressive rants and outright mockery of anyone who espouses traditional American values,” the Ziklag email read.The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas, Ziklag wrote, will “change that forever”. The email said the show needed $400,000 to $500,000 to film five pilot episodes, “which will be presented to digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups”.The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video instead.“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.“Big news in the world of show business,” Metaxas began the first episode. “Harrison Ford will be returning for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. In this one Harrison will find an ancient artifact … by looking in the mirror.”There were a few titters from the audience, and scattered applause. Metaxas, appearing nervous, continued with the one-liners:“Barbie’s longtime companion, Ken, just turned 61 years old. Yeah. And he said the perfect gift for his birthday would be to finally get a prostate.”This time there were some audible groans. Metaxas stuck at it.“In India, doctors removed 526 teeth from a seven-year-old boy’s mouth,” he chortled. “The boy is recovering nicely. However, the Tooth Fairy declared bankruptcy.”Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.The first episode featured an exclusive interview with Carrot Top, the 60-year-old prop comedian. Carrot Top showed Metaxas some of his props, including a bottle of Bud Light that had a torch in the bottom of it and a dinner plate that had a hole in it. Carrot Top managed to say absolutely nothing of interest during the three-minute tête-à-tête, before Metaxas cut back to the studio.“Tonight’s show is loaded with talent,” Metaxas announced to the live audience. The guests included a TikToker – “for our generation, Tic Tac was a breath mint”, Metaxas quipped – Tammy Pescatelli, a comedian who has been absent from the limelight for at least a decade; and Danny Bonaduce, best known for his work on the 1970s sitcom the Partridge Family.Throughout the episodes – as Metaxas sang a song with a terrified-looking Victoria Jackson, a self-described conservative Christian who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992 and has claimed Barack Obama is an “Islamic terrorist” – and as he continued with awful jokes about some scientists who had developed a robot that could build furniture but “cannot promise that the robot won’t swear”, it was hard to see what the point of this was.In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”In the pilot episodes, there were guests who were known for rightwing politics, but Metaxas largely didn’t ask them about those politics. In episode three, he seemed to decide he needed to at least say a bit of something to satisfy the rightwing donors funding this enterprise, but that came in the form of going over well-trodden ground about liberals.“Botanists have discovered a meat-eating plant in Canada,” Metaxas said in his intro. “Researchers determined that the plant started eating meat because it just got tired of explaining its vegan lifestyle.”He continued: “Detroit’s sanitation workers – I just read this – they’re threatening to go on strike. Detroit’s mayor said not to worry, because Detroit will continue to look and smell exactly the same.”Another quip ventured into current affairs: “Gas costs a fortune. It’s insane how much it costs. And who would have thought that the best deal at the Shell station would ever be the $3 microwave burrito?”Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.It’s unlikely Howard knew he was appearing on what Ziklag described as a “faith-friendly, late night alternative”, but that’s perhaps irrelevant, given networks clearly passed on what is a confused, drab copy of shows that are actually successful.But while Metaxas’s effort to shoehorn a conservative show into the mainstream may have been lamentable, the fact that wealthy rightwingers are attempting to do so should be cause for concern, given the threat television is under from Trump.Earlier this year, CBS scrapped the Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Colbert had repeatedly mocked Trump – weeks after CBS’s parent company settled a lawsuit with Trump. Trump has also called for late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who have both criticized the president, to be fired, while the president has overseen NPR and PBS being stripped of funding, having decried “biased media”.The Talk Show was a terrible product, memorable only for dreadful humor and snooze-inducing interviews. In the current climate, however, it serves as a reminder that the right wing is waging a well-funded war on the media that is unlikely to end soon. More

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      Trump FCC chair to reportedly testify to Senate panel after Kimmel suspension

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      Brendan Carr, the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has agreed to testify before the Senate commerce committee following Disney’s decision to take talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel off air temporarily, according to multiple reports.Carr agreed to testify after speaking to committee chair Ted Cruz, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter on Wednesday, adding the date of the hearing has not been set but was expected after November. Semafor was the first to report on the hearing.Carr, Disney, the White House and an FCC spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.On 17 September, ABC announced it would “indefinitely” suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s show, hours after Carr had appeared on a conservative podcast and appeared to pressure network affiliates to stop airing the show over comments by Kimmel on the death of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr had said, explaining that he wanted broadcasters to “take action” on Kimmel.Nexstar and Sinclair, two major carriers of ABC programming, quickly announced plans to pull Kimmel’s show, seemingly forcing ABC’s hand.Ultimately, ABC decided to bring Kimmel back the following week, and Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit. The network’s decision reportedly followed a wave of cancellations of streaming service Disney+.The show returned on 23 September and hit a 10-year ratings high among adult viewers.Carr’s comments drew criticism from across the aisle. Cruz said some of Carr’s remarks were “dangerous as hell” and compared him to a “mafioso”.During a news conference last week, Carr was asked whether he regrets the phrasing he used when talking about Kimmel, Carr claimed “the full words that I said, the full context of the interview”, were very clear. More

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      FCC chair claims he never threatened TV networks over Jimmy Kimmel

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      Brendan Carr, the tough-talking, pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed on Tuesday that Democrats and the media had “misrepresented” critical comments he made about Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talkshow.Television conglomerates including Nexstar and Sinclair opted to pull the show for “business” reasons, Carr argued, not because of anything he said.“There was no threat made or suggested that if Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get fired, that someone was going to lose their license,” Carr said during a press conference that followed the FCC’s monthly meeting.On 17 September, ABC announced it would “indefinitely” pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live!, hours after Carr had appeared on a conservative podcast and appeared to pressure network affiliates to stop airing the show over comments by Kimmel on the death of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr had said, explaining that he wanted broadcasters to “take action” on Kimmel.Nexstar and Sinclair, two major carriers of ABC programming, quickly announced plans to pull Kimmel’s show, seemingly forcing ABC’s hand.Ultimately, ABC decided to bring Kimmel back the following week, and both Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit. The network’s decision reportedly followed a wave of cancellations of Disney’s streaming service Disney+.Carr’s comments drew criticism from across the aisle. Ted Cruz, the Republican Texas senator, said some of Carr’s remarks were “dangerous as hell”.Asked at a press conference on Tuesday whether he regrets the phrasing he used when talking about Kimmel, Carr claimed “the full words that I said, the full context of the interview”, were very clear.“For a lot of Democrats, this has really been about distortion and projection,” he added. He then accused Senate Democrats of hypocrisy, referring to calls in 2018 for the FCC to review Sinclair’s “fitness to retain its existing broadcast licenses” over a controversial “must-run” video that its stations were forced to broadcast.“The very same Democrats that are saying that I said something that I didn’t are the same ones that engaged in that exact same type of conduct that they claim I did,” he said.With Kimmel now back on air, Carr suggested the entire episode was actually a win for local broadcasters – and a necessary check on the control of New York- and Hollywood-based broadcasters.“What we saw over the last two weeks was, probably for the first time in maybe 20 or 30 years, local TV stations – the actual licensed entities that are tied to specific communities – pushing back and saying that they did not want to run particular national programs,” he said. “They felt like they could stand up for themselves. I think it’s a good thing. And I hope that we can see potentially more of that going ahead.”Asked by the Guardian whether he was disappointed that Nexstar and Sinclair chose to bring back Kimmel’s show, Carr said he did not expect the pre-emption to last “for any sort of real sustained period of time” due to the economic pressures the companies were facing. “These were decisions ultimately were for them to make,” he said.During the meeting, Anna M Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, called out Carr’s comments – as he sat a few feet away. “This FCC threatened to go after [ABC], seizing on a late night comedian’s comments as a pretext to punish speech it disliked,” she said. “That led to a new low of corporate capitulation that put the foundation of the first amendment in danger.”While Gomez has been very critical of Carr’s leadership, she has largely refrained from attacking him personally, and has said that she maintains a good working relationship with him.While the FCC meets monthly, Tuesday’s gathering took on added significance and excitement. Outside the FCC building, a mobile billboard truck – organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders – carried the message: “Government can’t control media content.”Inside, the meeting room was unusually packed. Several protesters, organized by the progressive political action organization Our Revolution, wore T-shirts that said: “Federal Censorship Commission”. A few stood up during the meeting and yelled: “Fire Carr, the censorship czar,” and were quickly removed. One sign played on Carr’s tough talk to television networks, telling the FCC commissioner: “Brendan, We Can Do This the Easy Way (You Quit) or the Hard Way (You’re Fired).”When told by the Guardian that the “lengthy” (in Carr’s words) agenda for the monthly FCC meeting included seven wonky action items, one protester expressed frustration that they hadn’t eaten breakfast before arriving early. The man left before the meeting concluded. More

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      Kimmel controversy highlights ‘wildly dangerous’ consolidation of TV broadcasting

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      If the controversy behind Jimmy Kimmel’s show is a series of dominoes that fell one after the other, from the late-night host making his comments on Charlie Kirk’s killing to ABC halting production of his show, the first domino arguably fell this summer.Months before Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) quietly announced it was seeking to make a major change to broadcasting rules.The change would primarily affect three companies that own more local TV stations than any other company: Sinclair Broadcasting, Nexstar Media Group and Gray Television Inc. All three companies own the maximum number of local TV stations that is legally permitted for a single company to own.That national cap is set by FCC rules and says a single company can’t reach more than 39% of the total national television audience.In June, the FCC announced that it was seeking public comment to raise the cap, which would allow the companies to acquire more local TV stations. In a filing to the FCC, media watchdog Free Press said that changing the national cap would be “wildly dangerous”.“Handing even more media control to a handful of conglomerates and billionaires already so dominant in the space is a wildly dangerous idea, no matter who holds the presidency,” the group said.But by August, Nexstar announced its intention to acquire its broadcast rival Tegna for $6.2bn.“The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the big tech and legacy big media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources,” Nexstar’s chief executive officer, Perry Sook, said at the time.Nexstar – already the largest operator of local television stations – oversees more than 200 owned and partner stations in 116 markets across the US. Tegna owns 64 news stations across 51 markets. The deal would be illegal under current FCC rules, as it would put Nexstar over the national cap.Immediately after Kimmel was taken off the air, multiple reports have noted that Donald Trump’s appointed FCC chair, Brendan Carr, blatantly threatened the companies that air Kimmel’s show.“When you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said on a podcast. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Media experts called the move unprecedented.“The FCC is explicitly threatening companies that, if they don’t change their content in some way, they would suffer regulatory consequences,” said Gregory J Martin, a political economy professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who has researched the effect that media conglomeration has had on local TV news. “That just didn’t really happen before.”Soon after, Nexstar announced it would preempt Kimmel’s show. As a local TV station conglomerate, Nexstar partners with the “big four” networks – ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC – to run their content on its stations. This is where the term “affiliate” comes from. If a station is, for example, an ABC affiliate, that means that the TV station owner has partnered with ABC to run shows like Kimmel’s.That’s why Nexstar’s announcement was such a big deal. When it comes to Kimmel being broadcast on TV, ABC relies on these local TV station owners to get him on the air.After Nexstar’s announcement, ABC announced that it was indefinitely halting the production of Kimmel’s show.The backlash that ensued led to ABC announcing it would continue producing Kimmel’s show. But Nexstar and its competitor, Sinclair Broadcasting, both said they will continue to preempt the show, meaning 25% of TV viewers won’t be getting Kimmel’s show on TV.“Nexstar is continuing to evaluate the status of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so,” Nexstar said in a statement. “We are engaged in productive discussion with executives at the Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.”To media watchdogs, the conflict highlights the size of the media conglomerates such as Nexstar, which critics argue have become too large and too powerful.“This has been a problem at the FCC for quite some time. We’ve been concerned for decades about what happens when you allow media companies to become too consolidated and too influential,” said Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They become beholden to political power because they have so many entanglements with government agencies regarding merger approvals [and] policy changes that they … soft-pedal their reporting when it comes to criticism of those in power,” he added.Historians often point to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which dramatically relaxed regulations limiting the number of TV and radio stations a single company could own. The law set the stage for media companies such as Nexstar and Sinclair to exist and own a massive number of local TV stations.Over the past few years, political experts have expressed concern that this consolidation has been negatively affecting the quality of local television news. Though the number of local TV news viewers has been declining, millions of Americans still rely on their local TV news. And the funding for these local TV broadcasts comes from the station owners such as Sinclair and Nexstar.The Kimmel affair is not the first time that the station owners have shown their political colors. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Sinclair directed its local news anchors to read identical scripts criticizing “fake” news stories and “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country”.Trump defended the decision: “So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke,” he wrote on what was then Twitter.When criticizing Kimmel, Carr said that the FCC has to ensure that broadcasters who are using public airwaves are operating in the “public interest”. Martin said that, typically, the “public interest” requirement refers to producing local TV news shows.“That’s how they satisfy their public obligation, by providing informative news shows. It’s never been on the table that they could be interpreted to mean they have to not criticize the president,” he said. “That’s a big, important change in how the FCC operates.”Karr, of Free Press, said that the media watchdog has made it clear, in a filing to the FCC, that the regulator would need congressional approval to change the national reach cap.“We need to be watching the FCC very carefully over the next couple of weeks to see how far Carr will go in removing this huge hurdle to the merger,” he said.The New York Post reported this week that there is also growing criticism of the Nexstar/Tegna deal from conservatives concerned that the Kimmel suspension is “nothing more than a ruse to convince the White House its programming is watchful of leftwing bias” in order to convince the FCC to pass a deal that will hand the media group too much power.When he went back on air on Tuesday, Kimmel took a direct jab at Carr in his monologue, which has now received over 20m views on YouTube. Kimmel quoted the threats Carr made to broadcast networks over his show and said it is “a direct violation of the first amendment [and] not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public”.“You almost have to feel sorry for him,” Kimmel said. “He did his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.” More

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      Disney investors demand details into company’s Jimmy Kimmel suspension

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      A group of Disney investors is asking the company to turn over documents related to the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, amid charges the media company may have been “complicit in succumbing” to media censorship.The investors, composed of lawyers for the American Federation of Teachers and Reporters Without Borders, noted that Disney’s stock “suffered significant declines in response to the company’s abrupt decision to suspend Mr. Kimmel and his show”, it said in a letter to Disney.“The fallout from suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! sparked criticism as an attack on free speech, triggered boycotts and union support for Mr. Kimmel, and caused Disney’s stock to plummet amid fears of brand damage and concerns that Disney was complicit in succumbing to the government overreach and media censorship,” the letter said.The lawyers are demanding “copies of any meeting minutes, meeting agenda and written materials provided to the [company’s] board or presented at any meeting of the board” regarding Kimmel’s decision. It cites a law in Delaware, where Disney is incorporated, that says shareholders can receive materials around board discussion “to investigate potential wrongdoing, mismanagement and breach of fiduciary duty by members [of the board]”.Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comments.The company first suspended Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” on 17 September, after the network aired comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s killing saying “the Maga gang [is] 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”.The next day, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, criticized Kimmel’s comments and said that the regulatory agency would be willing to throw its weight behind making sure the companies airing Kimmel’s show are held accountable.“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Soon after, Nexstar Media Group, a major owner of ABC affiliates, announced it would preempt Kimmel’s show, calling Kimmel’s comments “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”. Nexstar is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger with Tegna, another major TV station owner.After Nexstar’s announcement, ABC, which is owned by Disney, announced it would halt Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” without further explanation. A few days later, ABC said the show would return Tuesday night. Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group, another major owner of ABC affiliates, said they would continue to preempt the show, which amounts to a Kimmel blackout for 25% of TV audiences. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC’

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      Late-show hosts discuss Jimmy Kimmel’s record-breaking return to air and Donald Trump’s escalator snafu at the United Nations.Jimmy KimmelAfter breaking his own YouTube monologue record and attracting 6.2 million broadcast viewers on Tuesday night, Kimmel celebrated the fact that his show returned again on Wednesday – at least, “for most of the country”, as Jimmy Kimmel Live! remained off the air for a number of ABC affiliates, including channels in Seattle, Washington DC, Nashville, New Orleans, St Louis and elsewhere.“Thank God they’re not pre-empting the new season of The Golden Bachelor because of this,” he joked, referring to his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration. “The FCC might not like jokes about the president, but they are still very OK with Poppop getting a squeezer in a Jacuzzi, and I think we can be very grateful for that.“A lot of people watched our show last night,” he continued. “I got so many texts from so many people – it made me realize how many of my friends are never watching the show at any other time.”That included “one very special friend” – Trump, Kimmel’s beloved “mad red hatter”, who wrote on Truth Social hours before Kimmel aired: “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“You can’t believe they gave me my job back?” Kimmel mused. “I can’t believe we gave you your job back.”Trump continued: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”Kimmel fired back: “There’s the threat again, this time straight from FCC-biscuit’s mouth. Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC.“You almost have to feel sorry for the people who work for him, who try to clean up the messes,” he added. “They go to all these lengths to say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t coercion! The president was just musing!’ And then the second Trump is alone, he sits on the toilet, he gets his grubby little thumbs on his phone, and he immediately blows their excuses to smithereens, and says it was ratings that got me fired.”Trump ended his Truth Social rant with: “Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings.”“And he does know bad ratings. He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had,” Kimmel laughed, referring to Trump’s record-low poll numbers. “So on behalf of all of us, welcome to the crappy ratings club, Mr President.”Late in the monologue, Kimmel offered an explanation to his critics for his continued focus on Trump. “I talk about Trump more than anything because he’s a bully. I don’t like bullies – I played the clarinet in high school.” And Trump, he said, was “an old-fashioned, 80s movie-style bully”.Backing Trump was like “rooting for Biff from Back to the Future”, he added, referring to the villain of the 1985 film. “I don’t know about you, I’m with Marty McFly.”Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert opened Wednesday’s Late Show monologue in a good mood, “because last night our good friend Jimmy Kimmel returned to television”.“Jimmy spoke beautifully about free speech and unity,” he said. “He made great jokes, showed his deep emotions, got huge ratings.”But “that wasn’t the only victory for free speech yesterday”, as a statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein skipping and holding hands was placed on the National Mall. “It’s a lovely piece, but I’ve gotta say, not very realistic – Trump can’t stand on one leg, not with those cankles!” Colbert joked. “It would be like trying to balance on a sock full of overripe honeydew.”The controversial statue was put up by artists issued an official permit to “demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery” by the National Park Service. “Good for you, National Park Service,” said Colbert, “and thank you for protecting free speech for almost 24 hours”, because despite the permit allowing the sculpture to stand until Sunday, park police removed it on Wednesday morning.In response, Colbert pretended to navigate the cancellation of Disney+ on his phone – “worked last time!”Park police said the statue was not “in compliance” with the permit, though it did not specify how. “I think we know how it violated the permit,” said Colbert. “We’ve all seen those signs in the national parks: ‘Leave no trace … of the Epstein files.’”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers focused on Trump’s visit to the UN in New York this week. “It’s easy to forget because so much has happened, but when Trump was running for president last year, he was adamant he was going to bring peace to the world,” he reminded viewers before several clips of Trump making such claims as “I will end the chaos in the Middle East quickly” or end the war in Ukraine “in no longer than one day”.“In fairness, he said it would take him one day, he didn’t say which day,” Meyers laughed. But “as a general rule, you should always be skeptical when someone tells you they can solve any problem in one day”.But Trump didn’t focus on any of that at his UN address. Instead, he was thrown off by a broken escalator, which shut down as soon as he stepped on to it. On Fox News, Karoline Leavitt accused the UN of trying to “sabotage” him with the frozen escalator and teleprompter.“Man, you know I’ve heard a lot about these globalists over the years, but I didn’t realize their MO was to just burn you with soft pranks,” Meyers laughed.“Teleprompter down, escalator off. When the president was talking, someone tied his shoelaces together! Are they a shadowy cabal or Kevin from Home Alone?”On Wednesday evening, Trump took to Truth Social to name the escalator episode among three “very sinister events” that took place during his UN visit. He claimed that Melania avoided a “disaster” by not falling “forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first”. He then called for the arrest of the person responsible for the frozen escalator.A spokesperson for the UN previously blamed Trump’s videographer for the incident, suggesting that they may have “inadvertently triggered” a built-in safety function while proceeding backward up the escalator to film his arrival.Meyers had to laugh: “Oh, hey, look at that – they solved the conflict in one day! How about that?” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel comeback breaks his YouTube monologue views record

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      So much for low viewership: Jimmy Kimmel’s comeback monologue is now his most-viewed one on YouTube.The nearly 30-minute segment, in which Kimmel acknowledged his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration, clarified his remarks on the killing of Charlie Kirk and passionately defended free speech, racked up more than 15m views in 16 hours.Numerous Jimmy Kimmel Live! sketches, interviews and other short clips have attracted tens of millions of views over the year, but Tuesday night’s segment marked record viewership for one of the comedian’s monologues.His previous most-watched monologue was from another emotional occasion in 2017, when Kimmel revealed the birth of his son Billy with a congenital heart condition that required immediate open-heart surgery. Other highly viewed monologues include Kimmel’s reaction to Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars (13m views), his response to the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017 (10m views) and his thoughts on Trump’s re-election last November (9m views).The spike in viewership comes after Disney suspended his late-night show under pressure from the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over his comments on the shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. The decision quickly became a cultural flashpoint, prompting national outcry over free speech and condemnation over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration. Disney reversed course on Monday, following “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and pressure from Hollywood stars, free speech advocates, consumer boycotts, union protests and even Republicans like Ted Cruz.Kimmel’s show remains pre-empted on the dozens of ABC affiliate stations owned by the companies Sinclair and Nexstar, which is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger. Jimmy Kimmel Lives! typically averages about 1.6m broadcast viewers per night, but according to the New York Times, experts expect this tally to be much higher for Tuesday’s show – despite the Nexstar and Sinclair eliminating about 20% of its broadcast audience.Shortly before Tuesday’s show aired, Donald Trump lashed out at the host, a longtime needler and critic, and criticized ABC for allowing his return to broadcast.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” he added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit filed against the network.In his return, Kimmel was neither conciliatory nor fiery. He decried his suspension as “anti-American” – “this show is not important,” he said, “what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this” – and clarified his stance on Kirk’s death. “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual,” he added. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Kimmel also praised Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for offering the accused killer forgiveness in a televised memorial service over the weekend.“Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this,” he later said. “I barely paid attention in school. One thing I did learn from from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American … Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want.”Jimmy Kimmel Live! will air as usual on Wednesday night, except on the 28 affiliates owned by Nexstar and the 38 owned by Sinclair. On Wednesday, Nexstar told Variety that it is “continuing to evaluate the status of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so. We are engaged in productive discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.” More