Follow the Merger
Back in the Watergate era, if you wanted to follow the money, you had to hold secret meetings with government sources in underground garages. Today, if you want to follow the merger, you just have to open your eyes as the strategy is deployed in broad daylight. No one but fools (and apparently a few hundred news headline writers) thinks Jimmy Kimmel was fired for anything having to do with Charlie Kirk. Trump has loudly and proudly been threatening his job for a long time (including right after Colbert was cancelled “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”), and an impending merger gave the administration the opening it needed. Nexstar, owner of ABC affiliates across the country, was the first organization to announce they’d suspend Kimmel’s broadcasts. “In the least surprising news in the world, Nexstar is seeking approval from President Donald Trump’s FCC to acquire Tegna, another media company. The $6.2 billion dollar deal would transform Nexstar-Tegna into an unprecedented mega-company whose reach would grow to 80 percent of U.S. households. There’s a hitch: A long-standing broadcasting rule prevents any one company from reaching more than 39 percent of U.S. households. So Nexstar doesn’t just need the FCC’s approval; it also needs the FCC to change that rule, or the deal can’t go through. Luckily for Nexstar, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has signaled he’s open to ending ‘arcane artificial limits’ on station ownership. But just a few hours before Nexstar announced it was pulling Kimmel, guess who went on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast to blast Kimmel and threaten that there were ‘avenues here for the FCC’ if companies didn’t take action? Carr.” Lili Loofbourow has a good and complete overview of what went down and why. WaPo (Gift Article): Kimmel’s suspension confirms what many suspected after Colbert’s cancellation.
+ “A prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.” Vox (Gift Article): Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel.
+ Congressman Jim Himes is one of the truly good ones. And I’m not just saying that because of the shirt he’s wearing in this video. “ABC, which is owned by Disney, took Jimmy Kimmel off the air because Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, didn’t like some things Kimmel said on TV.
I’m talking to you now because I’m just getting so damn sick of people who claim to be for free speech but turn out to only support free speech for people they agree with.”
+ And every now and then, it’s worth taking a look back at a headline from the past… Goebbels Ends Careers of Five ‘Aryan’ Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime.
