MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will be back on the air tonight, nearly a week after the late-night show was pulled off the air.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
During his monologue last week, Kimmel made fun of Trump's reaction to the Charlie Kirk killing and accused MAGA of using his death to score political points. The chair of the Federal Communications Commission made what seemed to be a public threat to ABC over the comments, and some affiliates urged the corporation to do something. Kimmel's show was yanked.
MARTIN: Now the show is back on, but not everywhere. Joining us to talk about all the back and forth is NPR's Mandalit del Barco, who is with us from Los Angeles. Good morning, Mandalit.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So for people who might not know, the Walt Disney Company owns ABC. So what did Disney say about putting Kimmel's show back on the air?
DEL BARCO: Yeah. The Walt Disney Company said in a statement that it had originally suspended the show because they felt some of Jimmy Kimmel's comments were, quote, "ill-timed and insensitive," and they wanted to, in their words, avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. But after days of thoughtful conversations with Kimmel, Disney said it decided to return the show on air. But, you know, even so, one of the larger broadcast affiliate owners, Sinclair, says it will not air "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on its ABC stations in 30 markets. That means the show will be unavailable to viewers in many parts of the country, mostly in the South and the Midwest. And for now, at least, Sinclair will replace "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" with news programming.
MARTIN: You know, people may remember that President Trump had celebrated the decision to suspend Kimmel's show, and the chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, reportedly threatened affiliates that he might take their licenses or fine them if they kept it on the air. But yesterday, apparently, he had a different message.
DEL BARCO: Yeah. So last week, Carr was on a podcast saying that pulling Kimmel off the air could be done the easy way or the hard way. But yesterday, Carr said that those comments were not meant as a threat to ABC affiliates. And on his X account, he posted what he said at a global affairs forum called the Concordia Summit.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRENDAN CARR: The reality is, there's a lot of Democrats out there that are engaged in a campaign of projection and distortion. And distortion is they're completely misrepresenting the work of the FCC and what we've been doing.
DEL BARCO: You know, Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, had said Kimmel's suspension was an alarming attack on the First Amendment. She celebrated Kimmel's return, and she thanked Americans from across the ideological spectrum for speaking out.
MARTIN: So, Mandalit, what about other reaction, you know, elsewhere to the news about Kimmel?
DEL BARCO: Yeah. Before the show was reinstated yesterday, nearly 500 entertainers that include Pedro Pascal, Selena Gomez and Olivia Rodrigo, had signed an open letter asking for Kimmel's return. Protesters around the country, including some conservatives, had been worried about what taking the show off the air meant for free speech in this country. And Kimmel's fellow late-night hosts had backed him up. Last night, Jon Stewart celebrated the news of his return, and he asked President Trump's defenders to join in fighting for the constitutional republic. In his monologue, Stephen Colbert cheered, saying, our long national late-nightmare is over.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
STEPHEN COLBERT: "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will return to air on ABC tomorrow, Tuesday night. Come on.
DEL BARCO: So Colbert, whose show is being canceled by CBS, joked that he's once again the only martyr in late night, and now many people are waiting to see what Jimmy Kimmel has to say when he returns later today.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Mandalit del Barco. Mandalit, thank you.
DEL BARCO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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