Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to ABC television airwaves on Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company has announced.
“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,” ABC’s parent company, The Walt Disney Company, said in a statement Monday. “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.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was initially pulled off the air last Wednesday following a series of dramatic developments stemming from comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s murder during his monologues earlier in the week. In response, Donald Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, demanded an apology and threatened the broadcast licenses of ABC affiliates. That prompted Nexstar and Sinclair — two of the nation’s largest owners of local TV stations — to announce they would be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future. ABC subsequently announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.
Kimmel’s suspension was met with immense backlash amid concerns that it marked the latest attempt by Trump to censor dissenting voices, and yet another example of corporate capitulation to his administration. Kimmel’s late-night peers, both past and present, spoke out in his support — including Stephen Colbert, who called it “blatant censorship” by an “autocrat.” Earlier on Tuesday, more than 400 actors and musicians — among them Tom Hanks, Ben Stiller, Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Florence Pugh, Pedro Pascal, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Keaton, Olivia Rodrigo, and Cyndi Lauper — signed an open letter condemning Trump’s crackdown on free speech.
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Disney’s stock fell roughly 2% and lost over $4 billion in value following the announcement. Reports also surfaced online of the Disney+ subscription cancellation portal crashing as users mobilized to boycott the service en masse.
