There will be no more Jimmy Kimmel on TV for the foreseeable future after the late-night host offered his take on the reaction to the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson told Deadline today.
Following the FCC Chair weighing in earlier Wednesday, the stunning sudden dropping of Kimmel comes mere minutes after Nexstar axed his late night show on the 32 ABC affiliates it owns out of a total of 200 stations throughout the nation.
“Nexstar’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show,” said the company in a statement Wednesday. “Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
Known for his “Prove Me Wrong” debates and MAGA POV, activist Kirk was shot dead at Utah Valley University on September 10 in a tragedy that has sent shock through the political and media worlds.
Having previously mocked Donald Trump over POTUS’ take on the NFL and TikTok, Kimmel offered his blunt assessment of the aftermath of Kirk’s death in his opening monologue on his September 15 show : “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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” the host said.
Watch it here, with the Charlie Kirk section and Kimmel on “four year-old” Trump’s reaction starting at the 2:00 minute point:
Reps for Kimmel did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the shuttering of Live! Whether this is a suspension that sees Kimmel back on late-night eventually for ABC or, with possible legal action, if this is the end of the Hollywood Blvd filmed Live! remains to be seen.
What is known is that Kimmel’s September 15 remarks on Kirk’s death were actually not the first time the ABC host spoke of the terrible shooting and its impact on the country.
“Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence,” Kimmel wrote on Instagram September 10, just hours after the fatal shooting.
No stranger to controversy in a divided America, the Emmy-winning Jimmy Kimmel Live! has held the late night fort on ABC since its January 26, 2003 debut.
Ironically or not, considering today’s news, the Matt Damon-obsessed Live! actually was born out of the network’s cancellation of Bill Maher‘s Politically Incorrect in 2002. In the early days of the War on Terror, the now HBO host rebuked accusations that the 9/11 terrorists were “cowards,” as the Al-Qaeda operatives were characterized by some in the Bush administration. The fast and harsh backlash saw advertisers flee PI in droves, and its demise was set.
In 2025, with polarization and political violence on the rise in the country – – as the death of Kirk and the fatal June shooting of top Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark by the conservative leaning Vance Boelter horribly displays — the divisions in America took on a form not seen since the 1960s.
As Trump, various conservative pundits, Attorney General Pam Bondi and others have lamented Kirk’s death, the killing has also seen the likes of Vice President JD Vance, who hosted the conservative’s podcast this week, lashing out at progressive billionaire George Soros and the “radical left,” as Trump calls them. On The Charlie Kirk Show on Monday, the often hard punching Vance was joined by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The aide selectively pointed the finger for such political violence at “NGO Networks” and swore to “channel all the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination.”
Hours before the announcements from Nexstar and ABC, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appeared on Benny Johnson’s podcast and blasted Kimmel’s remark, calling it “some of the sickest conduct possible.” He also threatened some kind of action by the agency. “There are avenues here for the FCC, so there are some ways in which I need to be a little careful, because I could be called wholly to become a judge on some of these claims that come up,” Carr said.
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way, or these companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
