ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” won’t be accessible to all viewers even after The Walt Disney Co. reversed course and moved to bring the show back following a brief suspension.
Sinclair Inc., a media company that operates the largest network of local television stations, said that although Kimmel’s show will return on Tuesday, it will preempt it on affiliate ABC stations and will air news programming instead.
“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!‘ across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” Sinclair said on Monday shortly after Disney announced the show’s return.
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Nexstar Media Group Inc., announced on Tuesday that it will join Sinclair in continuing to preempt Kimmel’s show.
Sinclair’s post came within hours of Disney announcing its plans to bring back the late-night host whose show was pulled last week in the wake of comments he made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was shot and killed Sept. 10 while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University.
A Disney spokesperson told Fox News Digital the company made the decision to suspend production on the show “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country” but that it decided to move forward with producing the show after days of “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy,” the spokesperson said.
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What to know about Sinclair:
The company owns, operates or provides service to 185 television stations in 85 markets affiliated with all the major broadcast networks, according to its website. It also owns the Tennis Channel and multicast networks such as Comet, Charge! and The Nest. Its content is delivered through multiple platforms.
Sinclair’s roots date back to 1971 when Julian Sinclair Smith founded Sinclair Broadcast Group.
His legacy of entrepreneurship began after launching radio station WFMM on 93.1 on the FM band in Baltimore in 1960, according to the company’s website. By the 1970s, he began exploring television and eventually started one of the first UHF television stations, its flagship station in Baltimore, WBFF-TV. That station signed on the air April 11, 1971, as a single TV station and eventually grew into today’s Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.
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It’s second station, WPTT-TV, went live in 1978.
By 1986, Smith and his four sons combined the operations of their three independent UHF television stations under the Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. entity. They appointed their long-term partner, Robert “Bob” Simmons, as Sinclair’s first CEO.
One of Smith’s sons, David, became CEO in 1988, and the company grew from three television stations to 59 stations in 39 markets and 51 radio stations in 10 markets. The company claims it became the largest television broadcaster in the country at the time.
By 1999, the company offloaded its radio group to strengthen its balance sheet and to focus on its television platform and the roll-out of digital television.
However, the company said the radio group sale had a historic value of about 19 times broadcast cash flow.
Christopher Ripley, the company’s current CEO, took over in January 2017, succeeding David Smith.
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