Noting that he is a reasonable regulator willing to compromise, incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced Tuesday that he does not require Disney to cancel the late-night host, provided the network maintains a permanent baseline of institutional dread.
WASHINGTON—Noting that he is a reasonable regulator willing to reach across the aisle, incoming Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced Tuesday that he does not require the Walt Disney Company to formally terminate late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, provided the network agrees to operate under a permanent, paralyzing blanket of institutional dread.
Carr, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the agency, clarified his regulatory agenda during a morning press briefing. He assured media executives that the incoming administration has no interest in heavy-handed censorship, explaining that the FCC will happily allow Kimmel to remain on the air as long as Disney’s legal compliance team spends every weeknight from 11:35 p.m. to 12:35 a.m. experiencing acute, stress-induced chest pains.
"There is a misconception that we want to weaponize the federal government to cancel specific television personalities, and that is simply untrue," Carr told reporters, adding that a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate preemptively watering down its own content out of sheer, unadulterated terror is a perfectly acceptable alternative to direct federal intervention. "If Disney prefers to keep Mr. Kimmel employed while their board of directors lives in constant fear that a single monologue joke will cost them their ABC broadcast affiliates, we view that as a massive regulatory victory."
We are not in the business of dictating what comedians can say, we are merely in the business of making sure network executives violently flinch whenever someone opens their mouth.
The compromise marks a de-escalation in Trump’s ongoing war against the entertainment giant, which escalated last week after Kimmel made several televised jokes that hurt the President-elect's feelings. Rather than pursuing a lengthy legal battle to revoke Disney’s broadcast licenses, the FCC will instead rely on the much more efficient strategy of vaguely implying they might do it at any moment.
At press time, Disney had reportedly accepted the arrangement, outfitting the Jimmy Kimmel Live! studio with a specialized team of federal compliance monitors whose sole job is to stand just off-camera and slowly drag a thumb across their throats whenever the host mentions golf.