For those of you who missed Saturday’s show (Sept. 20), here’s a transcript of what I said about the Jimmy Kimmel situation. I don’t have a whole lot more to say because, frankly, the story’s been talked to death.
As always, opinions expressed on Radio 9 with Jay Thurber are those of the host, and not those of WRCT Radio Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, Tube City Online Radio, or Tube City Community Media.
I’ve been trying to decide if I wanted to say anything about this or not, but what the heck — until they drag me off the air, I might as well, right?
If anybody wants to try to get me fired from WRCT, by the way, the joke’s on you …. they don’t pay me anything! (It makes it difficult to fire someone who doesn’t make any money, doesn’t it?)
But if you wanna try to get my show taken off the air, the email address is info@wrct.org, or you can write to WRCT Radio, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh 15213. That goes for the chairman of the FCC, too, if he’s listening.
So, the chairman of the FCC threatened the licenses of TV stations that carry “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” And as a response, Nexstar — which I think owns 200 TV stations around the country — pulled Kimmel’s show.
This is one of the problems right now — there used to be a rule in this country that you could own “seven, seven and seven.” In other words, you could own seven AM radio stations, seven FM radio stations and seven TV stations. Then they increased it to 10, and then — thank you Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich — back in the 1990s, they eliminated basically all of the rules. Now, you essentially can own as many as you can get your grubby little booger-hooks into. So we have companies like Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns Channel 22 and Channel 53 here in Pittsburgh, and we have Nexstar, and a couple of these big conglomerates that have gobbled up all the local TV stations.
Well, Nexstar wants to merge with another big, giant company, and they need FCC approval.
As for Jimmy Kimmel — and I’m not a huge Jimmy Kimmel fan; I’m more of a Seth Meyers person — but Jimmy Kimmel has been going after the administration pretty hot and heavy this year. Obviously our greatest president — your favorite president — doesn’t like that.
So he put pressure on the FCC — the Friendly Candy Corporation, which also governs radio stations. The chairman of the FCC wears a picture of the president on his lapel, and I’m not making that up. He has a tiny gold pin — well, it’s not that tiny, probably an inch wide (that’s what she said) — that he wears on his lapel that is in the shape of President Trump’s face.
The FCC has the final say whether or not these giant companies are allowed to get even more ginormous; he doesn’t like Jimmy Kimmel; the stations feel threatened; so ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air on Wednesday, apparently with very little warning. Supposedly, they were literally getting ready to tape the show when the word came down from the network, “we’re gonna run Celebrity Family Feud instead.”
Something to know about the First Amendment: It’s not “censorship” if WRCT decides my show stinks — and my God, they’ve had 20 years, if they haven’t figured out this show stinks by now — but if the program director decides this show stinks and takes me off because no one is listening, that’s not censorship. That’s not a violation of the First Amendment.
But if the government tells the station to take me off for any reason, that is a violation of the First Amendment, and what we have here pretty clearly is the government putting pressure on the TV station owners; the TV station owners losing their minds, as you might expect, with the government threatening them; and ABC deciding “let’s put Jimmy Kimmel’s stuff in a wet paper box and throw it out on the curb.”
This comes about a month after CBS announced they were no longer renewing Stephen Colbert’s show. Now, Stephen Colbert has spent his whole career going after Donald Trump; but when they cancelled Colbert, they said “well, the show cost so much money,” and they said “we’re just gonna let his contract expire next year,” so there was some plausible deniability that OK, maybe they were just doing this to save money.
I don’t think there’s anybody thinks that what happened last week was anything other than the President of the United States got his feelings hurt, and the FCC is punishing him for it.
And this is where if you want to get my show taken off the air, by all means, email info@wrct.org, and tell them you were listening to Radio 9 on Saturday afternoon.
Here are the comments that Jimmy Kimmel made that were so outrageous that people lost their minds. Are you ready?
And I should say first of all, last week, after a lunatic shot Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, here’s what Jimmy Kimmel had to say:
“Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”
OK. That’s what Jimmy Kimmel said last week; and here’s what he said on Tuesday that got his show canceled indefinitely:
“The MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered. Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, doing everything they can to score political points from it. And in-between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
Was that comment in bad taste? I guess that’s up to you. Was the comment offensive? Again, I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.
Was the comment factually wrong? Well, we don’t know yet the motives of this crazy person that shot Charlie Kirk; he hasn’t been cooperating the police.
But those those are the controversial comments they canceled Jimmy Kimmel for, indefinitely. And now the TV station owners — these two big companies that want to become even bigger companies — they’re demanding that Jimmy Kimmel apologize for this, and also make a donation to Charlie Kirk’s organization.
If you saw the chairman of the FCC talking about this, his comments could only be described as Tony Soprano-esque — about the revenge that they are looking for.
David Letterman was on a panel discussion this week sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and here’s what he had to say:
“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, everyone is going to be touched. For 30 years I did this for a living, so I see this happen of Colbert; that was inexcusable. The man deserves a great deal of credit. He’s in the hall of fame nine times and to be treated like that — all because the Ellison family didn’t want trouble with Donald Trump? With this move, they got rid of him, you’re not gonna have to worry about anything, Larry (Ellison); it’s all gone, fine, goodnight.
“And then my friend Jimmy. I just feel bad because you see where this going, correct? It’s managed media, it’s no good, it’s ridiculous, and you can’t go around firing somebody because you are fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office; that’s just not how this works.
“The FCC chairman — this guy, Brendan Carr — says ‘we can do things the easy way, or we can do things the hard way.’
“Who’s hiring these goons, Mario Puzo?
“For God’s sakes, when I was a kid, I was like 20 years old and I wanted to work at a radio station, so I went to Chicago to the FCC. You take a test, you pass the test, you have your third-phone radio broadcasting license; that’s what the FCC does. You’re a 50,000 watt clear-channel radio station, and once a year they come and check to make sure you’re not broadcasting at 55-thousand watts, and God forbid you are, then you get an $8 fine. That’s the FCC.
[…]
“The institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than worrying about a talk show. He really ought to be bigger than that … It would be hilarious it wasn’t something that we may never recover from.
“Here’s the thing that’s up my nose these days. People keep saying, ‘by God, we have get to work on those midterms.’ Well, I think the midterm elections will be elections in name only, I’m sorry. The Republicans have raised billions of dollars; the Democrats i think are staggering a bit behind in terms of fundraising.
“I’m not exactly of full-minded understanding of what Jimmy said, or what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made, but this is something that was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert was walked off, so you’re telling me this isn’t premeditated at some level?”
That’s David Letterman at The Atlantic Festival on a panel discussion talking about free speech; you can find out more at The Atlantic website, or you can see the whole discussion there.
And I think that’s where my thoughts on this situation lie, and I’ve taken up enough time.