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The Town with Matthew Belloni

Jimmy Kimmel vs. the FCC: Can Disney Escape This Mess?

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by journalist Bill Carter to discuss the suspension of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after portions of Kimmel’s monologue on Monday night sparked outrage among several ABC affiliate groups as well as FCC chairman Brendan Carr. They discuss Disney’s decision to pull Kimmel off the air, why certain affiliate groups might be motivated to side with Carr, what leverage the FCC has in this situation, Trump's online celebration and call-outs for other late-night hosts to be canceled, and where this all goes from here (03:49). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Bill Carter Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Bill Simmons, and I want to tell you about my movie podcast, The Rewatchables.

0:03.7

We're each week, I'm joined by Ringer movie lovers, Chris Ryan, Sean Venasy, Van Lathen, Kyle Brandt, Malley Rubin. We have a whole bunch of people on. We talk about movies. We can't stop rewatching. And now you can watch us cover these movies on video in the Spotify app. we have covered over 350 movies including Heat Goodfellas,

0:22.7

Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction.

0:24.2

We have some real heavy hitters coming up here in 2025.

0:27.2

Make sure to follow us on Spotify where you can watch every new episode right now.

0:33.3

Just head to the rewatchables on Spotify, now on video.

0:39.0

It is Thursday, September 18th.

0:41.9

If you tuned into Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and were confused a little when you saw Steve Harvey

0:47.2

in an old episode of Celebrity Family Feud, there was a big reason why.

0:51.8

Kimmel is suspended indefinitely, the result of a pretty wild sequence of events yesterday at Disney.

0:58.6

There's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of political posturing, so I want to go through exactly what happened clearly from a business perspective, hopefully with less politics, if that's possible.

1:08.7

In Monday's monologue, Kimmel made the following comment about the

1:12.0

aftermath of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. We hit some new lows over the weekend,

1:17.6

with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as

1:22.9

anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

1:28.3

Not a great comment from Kimmel.

1:29.6

I could see how it will be interpreted as suggesting that the guy who allegedly killed Kirk

1:34.1

was a MAGA supporter.

1:35.7

But that's not what Kimmel actually said.

1:38.5

Regardless, it lit up social media, lots of backlash, and Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman,

1:43.9

you'll remember him from the whole

1:45.1

Paramount Sale, CBS News fight, he pounced. He went on a right-wing influencers podcast yesterday and

...

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