The Kimmel Capitulation: We’re in F*** City
Disney serves up one of its biggest faces. Now let’s find our fight
With the industry at a crisis point and yet another red line being crossed this week, my column today is free to all subscribers. Feel free to share and pass this on — and if you aren’t a subscriber yet, sign up here.
Isn’t it amazing, when things seem hopeless, how much worse they can get in just a couple of days?
I wrote a column about all this just on Tuesday, thinking that would take care of the topic for a while. And here we are again. Only now it’s worse.
Like many history nerds, I spend a lot of time in my head concocting scenarios for how things would go in the event of various historical earthquakes, including several focused on what it would look like if the fascists came to power.
However, in all the versions I had in my head of a fascist conquest of Hollywood, I never imagined that this industry — the same industry that is ready to jump on a soapbox about anything, no issue is too small — would go down not just without a fight, but without a peep.
But the news that ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel from his show “indefinitely” really goes beyond the despair into the are you effing kidding me? side of the ledger. The MAGA assault on Hollywood is starting to look less like a battle and more like a mopping-up operation, like the fight has already been won.
If there are ways for Hollywood to degrade itself more than it has in the past few months — from Paramount and Disney settling frivolous lawsuits with the administration to the ouster of Stephen Colbert and now Kimmel — let me know because I’m worried we’re running out.
I’ve got so many thoughts here, none of them good. Let’s just let them all spill out and see where we are.
This Is Really the Bad Time
The reason why this is so sad is that it really feels like the end of everything for us.
Maybe I’m being dramatic. I hope I am. But this feels like the culmination not just of the Trump assault, but of the whole hopeless tragicomedy of the past few years, as Hollywood flailed, and squirmed and avoided finding a new path for itself in a significantly changed world.
Hollywood probably won’t just drop dead, but it may be transforming into something dull, pointless, and ugly — something that few of us would choose to sign up for.
First of all, the comment. On Monday, Kimmel said:
The MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
You can agree with this or disagree with this statement. That’s not the point I would have made before all the facts have come in, and it’s a bit blind to the mania on both sides after these tragic events to prove the often demented, intellectually muddled villain came from the “other team.”
But to think that this comment is out of bounds? That mocking a MAGA reaction is too much to be allowed on the public airwaves?
I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that nobody capable of writing their name actually believes that, and if they claim otherwise, it's in the service of performative outrage. That someone’s show should be taken off the air for this is… beyond something without merit. It is an empty gesture designed to show fealty through its very emptiness to a movement that has become fascistic.
It is possible that FCC Chair Brendan Carr, after years of such trollish buffoonery, such as his call to remove Kimmel from the air and threaten ABC’s broadcast license, is a fool enough that he actually believes what he spouts. (“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on Wednesday. “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.” He later celebrated Kimmel’s expulsion by sending memes and emojis to various media reporters.) No responsible country puts fools like this in positions of authority, and if one slips through, they remove them.
How We Got Here
The powderkeg was ignited when Perry Sook, CEO of the Nexstar Media group, owner of 32 ABC affiliates and, incidentally, the highest paid CEO in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, declared:
Fair enough. Affiliates are allowed to have feelings, even if they’re stupid ones (the feelings, not the affiliates).
However, look what else happens to be going on at this moment, all neatly packaged together in this headline from one month ago:
This company, which is so upset by Kimmel’s comment that it was ready to preempt its late-night programming, happens, as of the last few weeks, to have a $6.2 billion merger pending before the very FCC whose chairman was also very upset about Kimmel’s very mean words.
All this happens in a moment, as Dallas-Fort Worth’s highest-paid CEO noted in the story above, of intense consolidation for the broadcast industry, as the rails have come off and the Trump administration has given the green light to an unprecedented acquisition spree.
Which is where we come to Disney, and all of this dumped once again on Bob Iger’s desk.
And this is where we get into what your priorities are here. If you think the job of an entertainment conglomerate is to keep its stock price as high as humanly possible, every single day, no matter what, then, yes, absolutely, they should acquiesce immediately to their affiliate owners and avoid another fight with the Trump administration that could go who knows where.
If you think there is something bigger at stake here — bigger than Disney’s stock price, bigger than ABC, maybe bigger than all of Hollywood — caving almost instantly to this thugish demand is outrageous. Throwing one of your employees and public faces — a man who has hosted your Oscars multiple times and Upfronts presentations for years — under the bus before the sneers of a Texas affiliate kingpin and the FCC’s Trolling Commissar is insane.
I don’t want to hear any “Yeah, buts,” like… “Yeah, but we were going to get rid of the show anyway.” Or, “Yeah, but the stock price.” In normal times, I might have had some sympathy for those. (I’ve made abundantly clear that I am not a fan of today’s late-night talk shows.) But when a bully shows up and demands your lunch money, claiming “I wasn’t planning to eat lunch today anyway” as you hand it over — well, it may or may not be true, but it doesn’t make you look any less like a coward, most of all to the bully.
You give in on one thing, and the cost next time goes up. This started with Disney’s capitulation over the Stephanopolus suit, moved on to Paramount’s capitulation over Colbert, and then the 60 Minutes suit. And now the circus comes back to Disney.
Trump has your number, studio bosses. And he’s not going to stop. I warned, multiple times, of our failure to say anything about dishonors unfolding across the landscape — from masked agents grabbing car washers off the streets in our backyard, to Harvard University — that it was just a matter of time before he came for Hollywood. We were on his list. And now he’s here, and the price is going to be even bigger than a late-night host next time.
Think, “Oh, what’s one or two late-night hosts? No one watches these guys anyway.” Well, that’s the point. This is where the clampdown starts. Don’t believe me, take it from Garry Kasparov, who knows as much about the ways of the despots as anyone alive:
What’s to Be Done?
What are some other things Iger might have done?
Well, how about telling Mr. Highly Paid DFW CEO to screw himself, for starters.
If you want to live without late-night programming, you go for it.
Or telling Brendan Carr, “Go right ahead, my friend. Take ABC off the air. Who do you think America likes more, Abbott Elementary or you? Why don’t we find out?”
And maybe shut down that conversation once and for all.
Beyond that, what’s the point of spending billions building a giant streaming platform if your whole company can be held hostage by some Yeehaw Affiliate Cowboy?
How about saying: you don’t want him on broadcast? Fine, we’ll move the show to Hulu, and help your crummy airwave stations die a little faster.
And beyond Disney, here’s an excellent moment for Netflix’s Ted Sarandos to show once again why he has run laps around the studios for the past decade. In public at least, Ted has been notably less obsequious than others in the media/tech orbit. How about hiring Kimmel away, like today?
Or if he has to wait until his contract ends, declare he has a home at Netflix whenever he’s free to take it.
Someone has to show some backbone around here!
The problem is, there’s no counterforce here. There is no cost for the poohbahs for giving in to Trump. No one will pull their ads from the networks over this. No progressive affiliates will refuse to carry whatever Disney puts on in Kimmel’s place (hey, there’s an idea). And unless things change, no one is going to boycott any or all of these companies for real. (The hollow threat of boycotts with zero follow-through is the tool Hollywood activists have so overused, it’s not even laughable anymore.)
But what we need is some creative thinking of how to up the pressure here. Bluesky posts aren’t going to win this. Grandstanding isn’t going to win this. Our leaders know that the shelf life of Hollywood outrage is the attention span of a gnat.
So what are some things we can do to make it hurt when studios make choices like this? How do we make the bigwigs fear the cost of making these choices, because now they clearly do not at all?
I want to open the floor for some creative thinking here. In the comments below, please leave your ideas on what we can do to create some real counter-pressure on the studio here. Let’s exact a real price for decisions like this. If you don’t want to leave them in the comments, send them to me at richard@theankler.com. Next week, I’ll feature some of the best, and more importantly, the most achievable. We have to move mountains here. Let’s save the pie-in-the-sky fantasies for another day.
This all happens, of course, just minutes after the news of the would-be Paramount/Warners merger and the prospective death of another studio. This move probably would have been unthinkable and impossible at any other time. Today, they barely bother to defend it. The attitude is: We’ve got the clout to do it. Try and stop us.
The fact is, we’ve become a vassal state of Silicon Valley at this point (something made clear by the results of Sunday’s Emmy Awards, which The Studio dominated). Of the cameras rolling today, I’m going to make a wild, but I think fairly accurate guess that 70 percent of them are paid for by the techies — Netflix, Amazon, Apple and now Ellison/Oracle. That number will go up if the deal happens.
The romantic memories of “Lefties run Hollywood” are far in the rear-view mirror. We’re run by the tech world now. Even the remaining companies that technically are independent — Comcast, Disney and Sony — are hemmed in and outgunned by the tech entities, and have to be thinking about how they are going to compete with them in the long term.
And the tech world isn’t just tolerating all that Trump is doing. They are cheering every step of the way.
Bottom line: This has been the year I finally accepted that the studios are not going to save us. And by “save us,” I mean find a path forward through the nihilist, unsustainable vortex that’s been swallowing us for a decade now.
A solution, if there’s going to be one, is going to have to come from outside the system. The studios are not going to be our saviors. So let’s get going and build a new ecosystem. Mr. Kimmel, you have the floor.
Standing Up & Fighting Back
I don’t usually like to go crazy with adding the social media voices, because this is my damn column after all. Why should I share it with them? But today, this is about all of us standing together and saying “NO” with one voice. I think Marc Maron put this very plainly and clearly. Listen to what he has to say here. I don’t think he’s getting carried away. I believe this is precisely on the nose:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
All these people don’t remotely need the money. Everyone running this place could retire tomorrow and live lives where they never have to experience the horrors of economy class travel ever again. I won’t recite their salaries today, but each of them made more in this terrible year than almost anyone else will make in their entire lives.
And so a message to our leadership here: If standing up to this mob right now is more than you signed on for, more than you’ve got it in you to handle, there’s no shame in admitting that. Provided you stand aside and make room for someone else, someone hopefully who is ready for the fight.
Look, I get it. Dealing with all this isn’t the life I would have chosen. Personally, I would love to live in the Golden Age of Hollywood and experience that world.
But choosing when you live isn’t an option on the menu. We are all here right now. And this is the moment when our fate hangs in the balance. History will remember what each of us did, or failed to do, right now.
So make choices you can be proud of, for everyone.
We need more information out there to help more people. In the interest of furthering this, I’m putting together a Zoom meeting, open to all, for next Thursday afternoon, featuring experts on monopoly, including Ankler BFF Matt Stoller and others who can talk about what a Warners/Paramount deal would mean for you, and what it would mean for this industry. More details next week, but spread the word and please join us.
And for today, on The Rushfield Lunch at a special time (Thursday instead of the usual Wednesday), I have a very well-timed guest.
Today at 11 a.m. PT, I will be joined by one of my heroes of these awful times, Bulwark Executive Editor Jonathan V. Last, who hopefully will have some advice for Hollywood about how we can help create our own bulwark against the worst, which seems to be unfolding.
Just yesterday, JVL published this letter to give you a sense of his thoughts on this:
I think I’m going to suggest that we open the show with a group primal scream, which hopefully will be heard around the world.
Join us and share your despair, and hopefully a little courage, which is in short supply these days. Today, at 11 a.m. PT — if you dare!
You are right, Richard. It is the end of everything, but not because of Trump. Kimmel's ratings were in the toilet. As with Colbert. The public is turning away from the Left's monoculture. Remember that word? None of you did anything to shake it up as Hollywood was losing power. You all just kept silent out of fear. I get it. I do. Money is nice. But Kimmel didn't just say the shooter was "one of MAGA," which is a lie -- probably defamatory. But he also said that Trump did not care about Charlie's death and was golfing instead. This is a continuation of a ten-year smear campaign against half the country in increasingly disgusting and unacceptable ways.
They were getting calls from affiliates, calls of complaints, and yeah, they wanted the merger. That is on them. If it had been "fascism," Kimmel would have been shot on the spot or in jail.
I am not someone who believes people should lose their jobs because of things they said. I lost everything because I voted for Trump and made a joke on Twitter. I did not say anything so offensive as to deserve that, but Rebecca Keegan went around Hollywood asking advertisers, Academy members, others in the business if they knew about what I thought and if they agreed with it. That ended a 26-year business. Now, do you think that was right?
I was benched at Gold Derby. The Academy disinvited me to the ceremony. Publicists shunned me and stopped inviting me to screenings. THAT is what all of you think of the majority that just won in November. The empire is collapsing because no ruling aristocracy can survive when the majority rises up and says enough.
It's the Left that made this bed of cancel culture. Not you specifically, but the Left. When I tried to stand against it all these years, I was attacked viciously. The Biden administration was censoring social media, all exposed in the Twitter Files. We would never have known for sure until Elon Musk bought twitter -- he bought it because the Left was banning people for thought crimes.
You are right, this is the end, but it's not the fault of Trump or MAGA. It is the fault of people who closed themselves off from the rest of America, taking American culture with them.
You guys -- me for a time -- took everything from the working class and then demonized them for fighting back. The people with all of the power treated the majority in this country like they weren't good enough to be included. That is wrong. And it's why the empire is collapsing. It's also why Trump won. Yes, stand up to him. Preserve failing propaganda shows like Jimmy's. Do it. Fight for utopia. However, you can't stop the collapse until everyone realizes that our culture belongs to everyone.
Now I'm seeing all of the Oscar bloggers making political statements against Kimmel's firing because it is now safe to do so. None of them -- not one -- stood against it when hundreds were losing their jobs for saying one wrong word or making an accusation.
I hope that you all will be able to talk more reasonably about this, because if you don't, more people will be shot. Respectfully, your fan.
If you read the book High Noon, it’s about the Hollywood blacklist back in the 1950s and how the studio hits capitulated back then.
I talked about it in my Substack this morning. After reading that book, none of this comes as a surprise.