• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 9 hours ago

Did Nexstar and Sinclair overplay their hand with the recent preemption of Jimmy Kimmel?

To refresh, both major TV station groups preempted ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” following his remarks about a possible association of the person responsible for the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and they preempted the late-night ABC talk show for a few days.

An original complaint from Sinclair said that Kimmel needed to not only apologize but to make a specific donation. We don’t know what, if any, discussions the station group had with ABC recently.

We do know there was very public backing of Kimmel's ardent supporters -- and perhaps those of less frequent fans.

The returning show tripled Kimmel's recent viewership average -- 6.2 million Nielsen-measured viewers. And his returning monologue posted a best-ever result of 26 million YouTube views.

We also wonder whether Sinclair -- and perhaps Nexstar -- also heard concerns from their TV customers.

Except for some few key moments of honest, serious reflection in his returning episode, Kimmel continued to comically skewer President Trump (and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr) with the same intensity as in past shows.

Trump and Carr can do more, of course: Make threats on big cable TV news networks, or on social media and/or podcasts.

We figure Kimmel will continue his usual late-night political comedy material (as he has done for 22 years now) -- as will other TV and media comedians.

At the same time, one would assume that Nexstar and Sinclair will still want to be on the good side of Trump and the FCC when it comes to future broadcasting deals pinned to regulatory issues. This is especially true when it comes to potentially buying up more stations amid the ever-so-slow decline of over-the-air local TV station business.

This will come with mergers -- like the $6.2 billion one that Nexstar wants to do with Tegna -- as well as hoping the FCC is expected to attempt to loosen restrictions over TV station ownership where it currently sits for a company having no more than 39% of U.S. TV households.

However, media analyst and CEO of Substack publication Madison and Wall Brian Weiser warned that those stations' actions are not out the woods yet: “[This] should rightly cause consumers to expect that content will be more restricted on broadcast media going forward, which will reduce consumers’ trust in the news their TV stations deliver.”

The race is one for over-the-air broadcast -- and not in a good way.

“Nexstar and Sinclair may find that although their regulatory needs are more likely to be met going forward, the choices they made may contribute to the ongoing deterioration of their underlying businesses," Wieser said.