The Walt Disney Company said on Monday that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to air on Tuesday, six days after the late-night program was pulled from ABC’s schedule following the host’s remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “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,” the company said. Disney added that last week’s pause was instituted “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” and described some of Kimmel’s on-air comments as “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
Disney’s decision fixes the program’s formal resumption date at Tuesday, 23 September, nearly a week after ABC announced an indefinite pre-emption that sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry and triggered open-letter campaigns and street protests. Reuters framed the move as a reversal by the network’s parent after a weekend of internal deliberations involving Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment Co-Chair Dana Walden, who, according to people familiar with the talks cited by the wire service, concluded the show should return. “Disney said on Monday it would return comedian Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television on Tuesday,” Reuters reported, noting the six-day gap between suspension and reinstatement.
The reinstatement does not immediately guarantee full nationwide carriage. Two of ABC’s most significant affiliate groups—Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, Inc.—signalled they would continue to preempt Kimmel’s time slot in their markets when the show resumes, leaving portions of the United States without a conventional broadcast even as production restarts. Sinclair said, “Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming. Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.” Nexstar last week announced an open-ended pre-emption and cited “offensive and insensitive” remarks by Kimmel; its broadcasting president Andrew Alford said, “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time.”
The controversy traces to Kimmel’s 15 September monologue, delivered five days after Kirk was fatally shot during a campus event in Utah. In that segment, the host criticised political reaction to the killing, saying, “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk” and referring to “the MAGA gang” as “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” The comments drew swift condemnation from conservative groups and from the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission chair, and prompted pressure on Disney and its affiliates that culminated in ABC’s 17 September decision to pull the show “indefinitely.”