Keep in mind that Kimmel has been hinting about retiring for a couple years now, his contract was up in the air, the "late night television show" category is evaporating (if there's still even a Tonight Show in 10 years, it'll be purely for nostalgia), and this sends Kimmel out in a blaze of glory.

I think it's too easy to sort of anthropomorphize these kinds of conflicts --- Kimmel's show has a large staff, and he's responsible for their livelihoods --- but it wouldn't be totally out of the question that Kimmel steered right into this.

There's nothing new about this, though: ABC also took Bill Maher off the air, 20 years ago, almost identical circumstances. Maher wound up at HBO. Kimmel will wind up on a podcast, and, like Conan, probably gain in relevance.

Moments later

I think some people here might be too young to immediately get the Maher reference, but the point there was: he was forced off the air for political reasons as well.

> There's nothing new about this, though

Threats from the head of the FCC bandied about on a far-right podcast? Hello?

> almost identical circumstances

That is a stretch, "similar" is a better characterization. The Wikipedia article says he made the comments days after 9/11, and advertisers withdrew and the show suffered as a result, but the show wasn't cancelled until the following June.

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Here's a video of the Maher reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1c672...

I don’t see why it would matter whether Kimmel has steered into this or not (which seems pretty unlikely to me anyway)

His comments were not a fireable offence. He can’t steer into something if there’s nothing to steer into.

I wonder if, from a staffing perspective, it's actually easier to cancel a show under these circumstances than through a more traditional cancellation process.

> Keep in mind that Kimmel has been hinting about retiring for a couple years now

Keep in mind also that Trump threatened getting Kimmel of the air a couple of months ago

Additionally, the FCC chief also threatened affiliates today

Is it all a coincidence ? Could be.

But absent a statement from Kimmel we can conclude that pressure was applied to ABC or it’s affiliates to censor speech

Kindly, your post reads like a variation of the “Broken window fallacy”

Hey, who needs late night comedy shows any more

You have way too much karma for this

While the reasons you list reduce the cost to ABC for cancelling Kimmel, it is no less outrageous and alarming that the current administration forced Kimmel out because of his criticism of the government.

Maher, like the Dixie Chicks and Garofalo, criticized a deeply popular war (regardless of what you think of it) and were ostensibly cancelled pre-cancellation era. The government didn't issue a statement through a right-wing podcast stating that the network better toe the line or get it's affiliate license revoked.

You are right, this has happened before. This is far more like the purges of the red scare. People were just (perhaps naively) hoping society had progressed from where we were ~70 years ago.

Deeeeeeeefinitely not the political angle. Anything but, really.

All that's probably true, but the average person thinks Trump single-handedly accomplished this. Annoying because he certainly contributed, but he's not the sole reason.

Yeah, probably just coincidence. /s

I got downvoted for saying the same thing... go figure.

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