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Comment by IncreasePosts | Hacker News Reader

What you have here has nothing to do with the law, and has to do with power. Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.

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> Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.

"This is a nice merger deal, shame anything should happen to it…" does not look like a recipe for a free will / willing action to be made.

For the record, the merger is with Nexstar, not Sinclair, but the point is the same:

* https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d...

Why did Sinclair threaten to not air it?

Maybe they were coerced by the government. Or maybe they canceled Kimmel for the same reason the Trump administration was pissing themselves over Kimmel, because Trump and Sinclair are politically aligned and therefore inclined to act in similar ways anyway...

> Sinclair's stations have been known for featuring news content and programming that promote conservative political positions. They have been involved in various controversies surrounding politically motivated programming decisions,[172][173] such as news coverage and specials during the lead-ups to elections that were in support of the Republican Party.[174][175][172]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...

My read is they weren't coerced, but did as Trump desired because they like Trump. Either way, it should go to court.

"In recent months, both broadcasters have announced their intent to buy or sell local TV assets — Nexstar is in the process of effectuating a $6 billion merger with peer broadcaster TEGNA, and Sinclair is executing on a mixture of station acquisitions and sales — all of which require the approval of the FCC."

https://thedesk.net/2025/09/nexstar-sinclair-jimmy-kimmel-fc...

Because Sinclair needs the FCC to approve a merger for them. They read between the lines and know that to get it approved they need to apply pressure on ABC to can Kimmel to appease someone.

I wish the law that restricted the number of public stations/licenses a single entity could own was still in place. It was created to prevent what's happening now, silencing of varied and different ideas, views, and opinions.

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