ABC is bringing Kimmel back after suspending him last week for falsely saying Charlie Kirk’s killer was a conservative
Even though ABC is bringing back Jimmy Kimmel following a suspension for his controversial remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the beleaguered late-night host will still lose around a quarter of his audience as broadcasting groups Nexstar and Sinclair announce that their ABC affiliates will keep the show off the air.
“A total of 66 ABC affiliates won’t air [Kimmel],” Fox Business journalist Elizabeth MacDonald reported in a Tuesday X post, noting that Nexstar and Sinclair “cover about a quarter of ABC’s overall total viewers.”
“For Kimmel, he just lost about a third to 40% of his viewers depending on the quarterly result used,” MacDonald went on.
The New York Times also reported that “about a quarter of the ABC stations in the United States won’t be airing” Kimmel’s show.
Nexstar said in a Tuesday statement that its leaders “stand by” their decision last week to have their ABC affiliates stop airing Kimmel’s show. Sinclair announced a day earlier that “beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming.”
Disney, ABC’s parent company, suspended Kimmel’s show last Wednesday after the host drew widespread backlash over his remarks about Kirk, who was assassinated days earlier. While multiple officials confirmed that assassin Tyler Robinson has a left-wing ideology, Kimmel’s monologue accused conservatives of hitting “new lows” by “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.”
Kimmel’s show will return Tuesday evening, ABC announced on Monday. Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr last week called Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct” and indicated that the FCC is exploring “avenues” for action.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was already hemorrhaging viewers before the suspension, the New York Post reported based on Nielsen data. Total viewership fell to 1.1 million in August, down 43 percent from 1.95 million in January. Among those aged 18-49, Kimmel averaged only 129,000 viewers in August, down from 212,000 in January.
