From the U.K. Daily Mail,
Nexstar said Tuesday morning it would not be screening Jimmy Kimmel Live! on the 38 ABC stations it owns, Variety reported.
The broadcasting conglomerate joins the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which has already said it will not screen Kimmel’s comeback on the 32 ABC affiliates it owns.
Variety reports,
Nexstar and Sinclair’s refusal to air “Kimmel” means that nearly one-third of the roughly 240 national ABC stations will not carry the program for the time being. Together, the two station groups cover about 25% of the national TV viewing audience.
Of course, lots of other services stream the network feed, as Nexstar explains,
In the meantime, we note that ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be available nationwide on multiple Disney-owned streaming products, while our stations will focus on continuing to produce local news and other programming relevant to their respective markets.
The key word above is “relevant.” The programming offered by Kimmel is not relevant to wide swaths of America, which Kimmel denigrates nightly. I’m old enough to have seen Johnny Carson on late-night TV, back when the networks tried to cater to “middle America.”
Perhaps the middle is rising again.
