Trump says TV networks opposed to him should 'maybe' lose licence
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The remarks come after pressure from the administration led ABC to suspend late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel. Mr Kimmel made comments about the Charlie Kirk murder suspect, saying Trump supporters had tried to "characterise this kid as anything other than one of them".
Also, we speak to Omar Barghouti who co-founded the worldwide movement to isolate Israel, through boycott, sanctions and divestment; and we head to Moscow to meet some of the musicians competing in Intervision, the Kremlin's counterpoint to Eurovision.
(Photo: President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from a state visit in Britain, 18 September, 2025. Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello, welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:16.5 | We're beginning with a story which might seem small beers. Who cares that much about one man's late-night TV show in the US? |
| 0:25.2 | But which, at least in the telling of it, in the United States, |
| 0:28.6 | is prompting splash headlines about a new era of censorship |
| 0:32.3 | and about the very future of free speech in that noisiest and most powerful of democracies. |
| 0:38.3 | The briefest of recaps, on Monday evening the TV chat show host Jimmy Kimmel mused in his |
| 0:43.9 | opening monologue about whether the suspect and the Charlie Kirk Killing might have been |
| 0:48.3 | promoting a right-wing agenda. On Wednesday, the US broadcast regulator, a Trump appointee, |
| 0:53.9 | suggested that TV stations which broadcast Kimmel might have licensing problems ahead. |
| 0:58.7 | The same day, Kimmel was pulled from air by the ABC network. |
| 1:03.2 | Then on Thursday, flying home from the UK, President Trump told reporters that this could be just the start for the major channels. |
| 1:12.0 | When a late night host is on network television, there is a licensing. |
| 1:17.7 | I'll give you an example. I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me. |
| 1:23.3 | I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. |
| 1:27.6 | It won all seven. |
| 1:28.5 | States, popular, I won everything. |
| 1:31.1 | And if they're 97% against, they give you only bad for listening or press. |
| 1:39.3 | I mean, they're getting a license. |
| 1:41.6 | I would think maybe their license should be taken away. |
| 1:45.5 | It'll be up to Brendan Carr. |
| 1:47.8 | It'll be up to Brendan Carr. |
... |
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