FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to Testify Before Senate Over Jimmy Kimmel Threats

Two weeks ago, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr called for ABC affiliates to “take action” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, warning them, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” It turns out that the “easy way” runs through the Senate floor.

On Wednesday, September 17th, Carr went on a right-wing podcast and ranted about comments made by Jimmy Kimmel regarding President Donald Trump’s response to the murder of Charlie Kirk that Monday, accusing Kimmel of making a “concerted effort to lie to the American people” and warning that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

Carr warned ABC affiliates across the country, “It’s time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we’re going to pre-empt, we’re not going to run Kimmel anymore, and so you straighten this out because we, licensed broadcasters are running into the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.'” 

Hours later, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group, two of the largest owners of local ABC stations in the country, pre-empted Jimmy Kimmel Live! and condemned the host’s comments, causing Disney CEO Bob Iger to “indefinitely” suspend the late-night show.

Today, Jimmy Kimmel Live! is back on the airwaves, and, according to Reuters, Carr is now scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Commerce Committee regarding his attempts to silence Kimmel. Maybe the C-SPAN coverage of that testimony will score record-breaking ratings as well. 

According to the anonymous sources who spoke to Reuters, Carr agreed to speak to the Senate Commerce Committee following a private conversation with committee chair Ted Cruz, who was one of numerous conservative leaders to speak out against Carr's actions following the suspension of Kimmel. 

On his own podcast, Cruz accused Carr of acting like a “mafioso” with his open threats to ABC affiliates, and he explained how, despite his own personal acrimony towards Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the federal government pressing stations to take it off the air sets a dangerous precedent for everyone. “Let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ That will end up bad for conservatives,” Cruz warned.

Following the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel Live! by Disney, Sinclair and Nexstar, Carr attempted to walk back what most reasonable observers interpreted to be a threat to pull FCC licenses from ABC affiliates that didn’t comply with his order to muzzle the late-night host. However, even the Republican leaders to whom Carr is partially accountable aren’t buying his claims that the “hard way” comment wasn’t an attempt to put undue influence on broadcasters.

Now, Cruz and his colleagues will have the opportunity to grill Carr on exactly what he did or didn’t mean when he prematurely celebrated Kimmel's cancellation on Twitter at a hearing that, according to the sources, could happen as soon as December.