Kimmel controversy highlights ‘wildly dangerous’ consolidation of TV broadcasting

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 huge 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, senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press.

“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.”