Posted on 09/19/2025 5:23:01 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Just two days after Donald Trump was elected to the White House for a second term, Perry Sook held an earnings call with Wall Street analysts.
As the founder of Nexstar Media, the former West Virginia news anchor, now 66, had risen to become one of the most powerful, if least known, moguls in broadcast television. His company owns local stations from Tampa to Burlington to Portland, Oregon (and KTLA in Los Angeles), in addition to cable-news outlet NewsNation, Congressional trade The Hill and a majority stake in The CW. On that November Thursday, Sook had a fervent wish for how the coverage of the second Trump administration would go. He hoped, he said, the country would soon be “eliminating the level of activist journalism out there.”
On Wednesday Sook decided to undertake that activist-elimination mission himself, even if it involved more than a little intervention on his own part. Not long after FCC chair Brendan Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson that he was putting Kimmel on notice for the host’s comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson, Sook and Nexstar broadcasting division president Andrew Alford decided to inform Disney executives their company would be pre-empting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on the 28 ABC stations it owned, everywhere from Nashville to Salt Lake City to Hartford to New Orleans. Smaller competitor Sinclair followed, and Disney soon had little choice but to cancel Wednesday’s show and put Kimmel on indefinite leave.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Alford said in announcing the move. The decision also notably comes, however, just weeks after Nexstar announced a $6.2 billion acquisition of rival Tegna, which would give it 64 additional news stations in 51 markets to go with the 200 owned and partner stations it already has, and bring the company’s market coverage of the U.S. to about 80 percent. And current FCC rules cap any one company’s share at 39 percent.
Carr and the FCC, in other words, would need to loosen regulations to allow the merger to go through. Nexstar and Tegna will file their application with the FCC for the merger by the end of the month, according to an SEC filing.
The Kimmel episode highlights the freewheeling way Carr has wielded power since the FCC commissioner was named chair by Trump after the election — and, more broadly, how even just the specter of that power often influences media owners and leads to the quashing of critical voices.
Despite the timing of the announcement right after the Carr comments, Nexstar said in a statement Thursday that it made the decision on its own. “The decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.” A Nexstar spokesman did not respond to a request for more specific comment.
For some watchdogs, the Nexstar move parallels the decision by Paramount to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump that he had filed against 60 Minutes as the company’s acquisition by David Ellison’s Skydance hung in the balance. That deal was approved not long after by Carr’s FCC.
“When you have conglomerates with mergers and other kinds of business that need to be approved by regulators, it gives the regulators power that this administration seems all too willing to use,” said Samuel G. Freedman, a professor emeritus at Columbia Journalism School, where he taught journalism ethics, among other subjects. Combine that power with acquiescence by a media company, Freedman said, and it can lead to a chilling effect on the First Amendment. “I think you can categorize all this with the failure of institutions since Trump’s second term began. It’s hard to feel anything but anger and sadness about what this portends.”
The possibility that the Kimmel fracas was merger-related even reached the doorstep of the Hollywood Teamsters, generally a less liberal group who nonetheless “condemned” the Nexstar, Sinclair and ABC/Disney moves and collared what it said was the culprit. “We are witnessing a dangerous trend of corporations trying to fast-track mergers through the back door,” the group said in a statement Thursday.
Carr, who has already opened an investigation into Disney and ABC’s DEI policies, has long noted his contrasting feelings on national and local news outlets, the former of which tend to be more liberal, and suggested he wanted to empower local stations at the national outlets’ expense.
“Americans no longer trust the national news outlets to report fully, accurately, and fairly,” Carr wrote in a July letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, whose company owns NBC, in which he said he wanted “to ensure compliance with FCC regulations as well as the public interest standard.” But Carr added that “[i]n sharp contrast to national news media outlets, Americans largely hold positive views of their local media outlets, including local broadcasters.”
The Kimmel controversy also highlights the surprisingly durable power of local stations, whose time slots and blessing it turns out giant Los Angeles- and New York-based media conglomerates still very much need. Disney owns the ABC stations in large markets such as those two cities, but to sell advertising at the rate it wants it also needs the ideological buy-in of a quiltwork of local stations. At a time of balkanization by politics and region, that can be very hard to pull off.
Sook’s role on one side of one of the most rancorously partisan Hollywood-Washington fights in decades is unexpected. The tycoon can be hard to pin down politically; he has made campaign contributions to a mix of Republican and Democrat Congressional candidates over the years, according to OpenSecrets, from Mitch McConnell and Greg Walden on the right to Patrick Leahy and Chuck Schumer on the left. And ironically, Sook has often tried to find the middle ground between ideological poles at NewsNation, which he has pitched both inside and outside the industry as sitting appealingly between MSNBC and Fox News.
When he was staffing up the channel, Sook took Elizabeth Vargas, whom he was hoping to recruit as an anchor, out to lunch. “Do you want to come be a part of the last great adventure on television?” Sook told her, she recounted. He cited that middle ground, in which there would be opinionated but politically uncategorizable hosts like Dan Abrams and Chris Cuomo, as well as a funneling of local stories from Nexstar’s stations (as the network effectively did with KTLA’s coverage of the Los Angeles fires earlier this year).
“The contrast couldn’t be more stark,” Sook said, standing in NewsNation’s New York City newsroom in April 2023, as he sought to distinguish his network from the longstanding dug-in news players. And there are signs the vision is materializing: Earlier this month NewsNation beat CNN and MSNBC in the critical adults 25-54 demo on at least one Saturday night.
But Sook has been partisan on one issue: television deregulation, which he says is overdue for a laissez-faire makeover given that the rules were drafted before the dominance of tech companies.
Last month, as he sought to placate investors that the FCC would not block the Tegna deal despite the clear regulatory challenges, Sook took an upbeat, even confident tone.
“We feel very, very positive about moving forward with the regulatory approval process,” the executive said. “We’re meeting this deregulatory moment where it is, and we will work together with regulators as they consider modifying and repealing outdated rules and regulations.”
Katie Kilkenny contributed to this report.
They’re both wrong. This is business decision.
To be fair, the deal requires regulatory approval and the FCC Chairman has been clear about his views. Nonetheless, any CEO would likely make the same decision to effectively fire Kimmel. To do otherwise would risk a shareholder lawsuit claiming breach of fiduciary duty.
I doubt the Founders would want the govt to have any say in a private transaction between firms. But until the FCC is defunded, this is where we are.
Kimmel lying is protected speech. That’s why the angle being used is that Kimmel violated the “public interest standard.” However, that standar is not well-defined. . You can drive a truck through it.
I believe Kimmel knew which way the wind was blowing, and he intentionally cranked up his vective to provoke management in order to achieve martyrdom. Kimmel is now the toast of leftism, he will get paid out of his contract and the only people getting screwed is the support staff ( clearly leftists don’t care about “the little people”).
the sacrificial turd
Wasn’t there a limit of seven TV stations in the past?
Almost all the replies I've seen or heard from the right have been "this is a business decision."
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them”
Defaming tens of millions of people could be costly. The network tried to head off an expensive lawsuit.
This is the preferred LAAP-dog media narrative, but it is far from the truth of what's going on.
Bob Iger understands the decades of double-standards that ABC/Disney engaged in with their hiring and firing practices, and he's moving to institute a more balanced treatment of talent going forward.
Consider:
Rosie O'Donnell: Left voluntarily in 2007 after her fight with Hasselbeck, was invited back for another season in 2014
The show infuriated the left who didn't expect the reboot to be about working-class Trump supporters who literally talked about "kitchen table issues" at the kitchen table on the show. Liberals were afraid the show would "normalize" Trump and called for boycotts.
ABC said it was a business decision because they didn't own the show and had to pay license fees to 20th Century Fox Television. However, the show was ABC's second-highest comedy of the 2017 season and regularly won its Friday night time slot with 8.1 million viewers. Fox picked up the show in 2018 and ran it for three more seasons.
Bob Iger probably saw trouble looming on the order of the Stephanopoulos lawsuit after Kimmel suggested Charlie Kirk's shooter was aligned with the "MAGA gang" when investigations revealed Tyler Robinson had "leftist ideology" and pro-LGBTQ+ motivations. Both involved factually inaccurate statements that could be seen as defamatory, and Kimmel was demanding to go back on the air to double-down on his comments from the night before.
Iger had just experienced the financial and reputational cost of allowing an ABC host to make unsubstantiated claims about political figures. The settlement occurred barely nine months before Kimmel's suspension, making the parallel impossible to ignore.
Iger wasn't bowing to FCC pressure - he was protecting Disney from another expensive discrimination lawsuit that would further expose the company's documented pattern of ideological favoritism. The Jimmy Kimmel suspension is Iger's attempt to re-establish consistent standards before facing another expensive discrimination lawsuit that would further expose Disney's past selective enforcement policies.
-PJ
Wasn’t kimmel a frequent flyer on the Lolita express?
His show was hemorrhaging money. It was a business decision.
Here’s the real story.
It’s true that the PICON (public interest, convenience, and necessity) standard is poorly defined, but it’s also true that the FCC has basically ignored that it even exists for the past 40 years:
In 1981, broadcasters abandoned their voluntary code of conduct, which had established programming and advertising standards through industry self-regulation.
In 1981, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created a “postcard renewal process,” throwing aside a more detailed review of whether broadcasters are meeting their obligations.
In 1984, the FCC eliminated the ascertainment requirements whereby broadcasters had to reach out to the public, determine local community needs, address those needs through their programming, and defend those choices in their license renewal process.
In 1987, the FCC repealed provisions of the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to provide reasonable opportunities for contrasting and dissenting views on controversial topics.
In 1996, Congress passed a telecommunications deregulation bill that allows further consolidation in radio and television markets.
In 2003, the FCC eliminated a wide range of media concentration protections, allowing a single company to own eight radio stations, three television stations, the only daily newspaper, the dominant cable TV provider, and the largest Internet Service Provider in a single community. It also effectively allows media conglomerates to control TV stations that serve up to 90 percent of all Americans.
So it’s appropriate to revisit it now - long overdue in fact. This pertains only to broadcast TV, which is where Kimmel made his comments. Had he done so on cable or online, there would be no issue.
The bottom line is, he was bad for business by alienating over half of the potential audience. Nothing to do with free speech.
Must’ve graded on the (very steep) curve...
The affiliates finally gave a voice to the popular majority that voted for Trump.
For years on end, the networks have been by bi-coastal blue.
Yes, it is a business decision.
Consumers in flyover country are finally being represented and not having garbage content shoved down their throats by the coastal elites.
It’s populism, baby, and to all the elites I say welcome to the reality of a Trump popular majority.
Votes matter.
That is when the votes are real and made by real voters.
Excellent thanks
I disagree Kimmel knew exactly what he was doing trying to pin Charlie Kirk on MAGA. You cannot lie openly like that with a company with an FCC license that is termination of an fcc license cut and dried
If lying was against the rules of the FCC, there’d be nothing on TV.
I think people should see this a major opportunity, not as some negative.
A stellar talent has just become a free agent and I'm at loss to understand how media moguls are not beating down the doors to offer him 100 million year contracts.
This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment.
It's only about airwaves and what's required to use them.
It wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Kimmel was dead weight. Ballast that had to be dropped if you wanted to get anywhere at all.
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