Anonymous Unmasks the Real Reason Behind Kimmel’s Firing (youtube.com)
This channel called ‘Anonymous’ with the Guy Falks avatar says it was because Kimmel likened Trump to a 4 year old, not because of his comments about Kirk (on the same show).
You can follow the chain of president to media employee pretty clearly, if this is true, but as Charlie Sheen said about it yesterday, there's not a lot about it we know yet. So better to not jump to conclusions about blame, but it's interesting to look at for the still valuable systemic information it presents.
Trump perhaps already had influence pressed on ABC, because weeks ago he posted that Kimmel was ‘next’ after Colbert. After Kimmel's show (in question), ABC affiliates, owned by Nexstar, refused to air Kimmel's show. Sinclair Broadcasting, another powerful right wing media company, joined in. ABC, under Disney's control, caved, announcing they were suspending Kimmel's show indefinitely.
Nexstar is in the middle of a $6.2b deal to acquire Tegna, another giant in local broadcasting. That deal requires FCC approval. (Sinclair also had it's own regulatory concerns.) They actually need the FCC under Carr to change the regulations about how corporations can be owned so they can do this deal.
FCC chair Carr called Kimmel's comments ‘sick’ and strongly hinted broadcasters coul face consequences.
The government can just threaten corporations that rely on government approval. The Anonymous channel calls it ‘censorship through regulatory extortion.’ You can see why some people don't want governments to have any control over what should be separate independent government agencies like media regulations (FCC in America), and why governments constantly try to capture control share.
People are watching to see what happens to South Park. But the South Park contract is ‘carved in stone’ according to one commenter.
A couple weeks ago, right before Paramount's merger with Skydance was approved by the FCC, Colbert's show was announced to be cancelled soon (sooner than originally expected).
Comedians who criticize Trump, Anonymous posits, are liablities to big media corporations. Lol, you'd see the liability of having no funny edgy comedians also.
However, we kind of have had ‘no funny edgy comedians’ in terms of none of these shows did funny criticisms of Democrat leaders or causes. SNL had become extreme.
The Anonymous channel also comments that this is ‘a symptom of a system where too much power is concentrated in too few hands, and democracy itself suffers.’ This is also the situation in BigTech and also BigRetail. A dozen companies, easy to control.
Trump was the victim of these same things, cancelation, censorship, lawfare, and sounded like he was championing them on his campaign trail, but not many politicians actually do that once they're in office. Maybe this one will be just the same.
It strikes one similar to the story arc under Duarte, who the population of Philippines hungered for, and then he earned credit and acclaim in the early days because of law and order and cleaning things up, but just kept going.