Kimmel, Late Night & the Fury — and Future — of Hollywood Comedians
Disney’s Dana Walden, Rob Mills reinstate their star as top comics fume and look to the next gen: ‘There will be careers for people who make fun of the powerful’
Editor’s note: A few hours after this story was published, Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to ABC on Tuesday.
So much can change in a week. Last Sunday, there was late-night host Jimmy Kimmel at Disney’s Emmy afterparty in DTLA, roaming the room in good spirits. A day later, he’d deliver a monologue that would ignite the ire of FCC chair Brendan Carr and lead to Kimmel’s show being “indefinitely” pulled off the air by ABC.
The maelstrom over free speech in comedy (and well, pretty much everywhere) is only growing, with voices from Barack Obama to former Disney chief Michael Eisner to Howard Stern chiding the administration’s overreach and Disney’s response. Hundreds of stars — Jennifer Aniston to Tessa Thompson to Disney and Marvel star Pedro Pascal — have signed an open letter from the ACLU backing Kimmel and defending free speech. Nexstar and Sinclair pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off their ABC affiliates only after FCC chair Carr said, on a right-wing podcast last Wednesday, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead” — directly implying that the federal agency would move against Disney if the company did not comply.
You can get the complete play-by-play of what happened between Dana Walden and her Disney star before the decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our latest mega-episode of The Ankler podcast, including how the crisis unfolded behind the scenes at ABC on Wednesday and Thursday — as Kimmel had hoped to address the situation on air and execs kiboshed that plan — and how Nexstar’s pending $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna could play into all this.
Now, as of today, Disney execs — including head of alternative Rob Mills, who oversees Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Walden — are expected to meet with Kimmel early this week. Crew are typically given the following week's schedule on Friday — last week the show's line producer let crew know on Friday that they should not show up to work until informed otherwise (Kimmel and the crew are still being paid during the suspension). Both sides last met Thursday as sources tell Lesley that Disney is focused on finding a path forward to bring back the longtime host. As of this morning, Disney has yet to determine what will air tonight in Kimmel’s 11:30 p.m. slot. One source tells Lesley of the evolving nature of the situation: “It’s hour to hour.”
Today we dive into the Kimmel crisis — talking to people including WGA president Meredith Stiehm, comedian Adam Conover and veteran late-night writers Josh Gondelman and Greg Iwinski — and the wave of outrage sweeping comedy. Here’s what Disney’s move and Trump’s threats could mean right now for careers, jobs and dissent in a genre already fighting for its life.
Read on for:
The business and cultural forces squeezing late night
Why these shows still shape the comedy ecosystem, even as ratings slide
What writers can only learn inside a late-night room
How “dissenting voices” have dwindled since Trump’s first term
The meritocratic pipeline that launches careers from late night
Who’s reinventing the format to be “more punk rock”
Why millennial comics see opportunity for Gen Z talent
Where the funniest and loudest new voices are breaking out now
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