The late night TV landscape was majorly shaken up earlier this year with the shocking cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and now ABC's Jimmy Kimmel is facing his show being pulled from the air. After media group Nexstar decided not to air Jimmy Kimmel Live! on any of the 200 television stations the company owns across the United States, ABC confirmed that the show is being suspended indefinitely. The news came just hours before a new episode was set to air, with one guest already hyping their appearance on the show.
ABC confirmed via a spokesperson that "Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely" to Deadline on September 17, just past 3:30 p.m. ET with the next new episode already scheduled for the usual broadcast time of 11:50 p.m. ET. The decision came down shortly after Nexstar announced that its owned and partner stations affiliated with ABC Network Television would "preempt" Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the "foreseeable future beginning with tonight's show."
The company cites comments made by the host that it deems "offensive and insensitive," not reflecting "the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located," according to Andrew Alford, the President of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. He went on:
Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.
Neither Andrew Alford nor the ABC spokesperson specificed at the time of writing which comments from Jimmy Kimmel prompted such an extreme response, but the timing suggests that the comments came from the opening monologue from the Jimmy Kimmel Live! episode that aired on Monday, September 15. Kimmel commented on "new lows" from the weekend tied to the death of Charlie Kirk.
The news comes as both the show and one of its scheduled guests for the September 17 broadcast were still hyping the next episode. Tonight's broadcast was set to feature Wanda Sykes, Jay Shetty, and Chef Christian Petroni as guests. Petroni's wife, Sheri Petroni, posted on her Instagram Stories an ad that aired during an ABC7 New York morning news broadcast for the then-upcoming Jimmy Kimmel Live! episode, which her husband reposted on his own Stories and added "Cooking something special tonight on [Jimmy Kimmel Live!]."
It was then reposted in the Instagram Stories of the official Instagram page for Jimmy Kimmel Live! and remains live on the social media page at the time of writing. For now, it remains to be seen what ABC does next with the long-running late night TV show. The press release statement from Nexstar did note that the preemption was intended to "let cooler heads prevail," so perhaps it's just a matter of time before Kimmel is back on television.
The news comes shortly after the 77th Emmy Awards, at which Jimmy Kimmel supported Stephen Colbert in winning the award for Outstanding Talk Series despite being nominated in the same category. He previously deemed the claim that The Late Show was cancelled for financial reasons to be "nonsensical," and he was one of many celebrities to immediately show support for Colbert in the wake of the cancellation news.
A strong response to Jimmy Kimmel Live!'s indefinite suspension is likely at this point. If you want to revisit the most recent episodes prior to the big news, you can find the talk show streaming with a Hulu subscription.
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