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Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel returns to the television airwaves Sept. 23, a week after the Walt Disney Company suspended his show for flippant remarks he made surrounding the assassination of activist Charlie Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump.
Portlanders won’t see him. The local ABC affiliate, KATU-TV, is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which says it will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! amid “ongoing” conversations with the network about the show’s future.
Disney pulled Kimmel from the air after receiving pressure from the head of the Federal Communications Commission and the owners of local ABC affiliates. One of those ownership groups, Nexstar, is seeking FCC approval to purchase one of its competitors, Tegna—it has ample motivation to curry favor with Trump.
If the Nexstar deal goes through, three of Portland’s four major local broadcasters will be owned by media companies that offered anticipatory obedience to the president.
Among the stations that Nexstar would receive with a purchase of Tegna is KGW-TV, the local NBC affiliate. Nexstar, which also continues to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations, already owns KOIN-TV, the Portland affiliate of CBS. And KATU-TV, the local ABC station that used to Kimmel? Its owner, Sinclair, has called for the comedian to donate money to Kirk’s family and his conservative political machine, Turning Point USA. (WW partners with KATU on a weekly segment highlighting our reporting.)
That leaves only one major Portland broadcaster that hasn’t acted to cancel Kimmel. Ironically, it’s the local Fox affiliate, KPTV.
To put it mildly, none of this is likely to land well with Portland audiences—especially when Trump repeatedly threatens to send federal troops to the South Waterfront to silence protesters of his immigration policies. On Sept. 19, venerable blogger Jack Bogdanski came out of retirement to call for a boycott of KATU, along with its advertisers and partners. “Anybody I’d want to be around is, like me, utterly outraged that Mudface Caligula has fired Jimmy Kimmel,” Bogdanski wrote, “and that the corporate overlords at Disney and Sinclair did the Führer’s foul bidding in pulling the late-night host off the air.”
News directors at local stations directed WW’s requests for comment to corporate offices, which did not respond by press deadline.
