🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
Caloroga Shark Media. Hey it’s John. It’s Thursday afternoon. This is a Jimmy Kimmel bonus. I think we’ll start to ramp down from the constant Jimmy Kimmel bonus episodes as the news settles in.
But I do like to gauge the temperature of what I call the civilians. These are the people in normal life who aren’t listening to Daily Comedy News. They’re not comedy snobs, and they were still talking about Jimmy Kimmel today, So I figured let me do one more in here. Then I think we’ll get back to a normal schedule, although on Sunday I have Julie Seaboss. He produced the new Mark Marin documentary, so I’m gonna drop that into the feed on Sunday.
We’ll get to that. Jimmy Kimmel’s Show on Tuesday Night six point twenty six million total viewers, despite not airing on twenty three percent of US television households because of the whole you Know Next Star Sinclair thing during the twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five season that was September to May. Jimmy Kimmel’s average viewership was one point four to two million. Again. The other night got six point twenty six million.
I don’t have final Wednesday Night numbers yet, but as of ten am Wednesday morning, the Wednesday Night monologue, so that’s night two. The Wednesday night monologue had three and a half million views. The Tuesday night monologue, his first night back, was closing in on twenty million views on YouTube. On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel and his monologue said, moments after we taped our show last night, the Mad Red Hatter or I can’t believe they gave me my job back. I can’t believe we gave you your job back.
Good joke Kimmel. Again, he says, I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me sixteen million dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.
Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC. Another good joke, Kimmel one more time. This was his big closer. Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings, and he does know bad ratings. He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had so on behalf of us all.
Welcome to the crappy ratings club. Mister President, I’m doing a quick Google search here of the words Kimmel Trump. I don’t think the President has addressed the situation today. On Thursday, JD. Van suggested that the SEC chairman he was just kidding.
It was just a joke. Uh huh, right, sure, Jan. A reporter asked about free speech implications. Vice President JD. Vance said what people will say is didn’t the FCC commissioner put out a tweet that said something bad?
Well, compare the FCC commissioner making a joke on social media. What is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in the kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air? Zero? What government pressure have we bought to bear to tell people that they’re not allowed to speak to their mind? Zero?
Hang on there a second. Now, I’ll let the lawyers parse the language on what social media is or not. Commissioner car was on Benny Johnson’s podcast is a podcast social media? Or is a podcast a podcast? Like right now, I think I’m doing a podcast and I’m not on social media right now.
But I’m not a lawyer anyway. Whatever Benny Johnson’s thing is. Commissioner car said, frankly, when we see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. Now, going back to Vice President Vance’s comments, well, compare the FCC commissioner making a joke on social media.
What is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air? Zero hold on a second, their Vice President Vance President Trump on social media and President Trump’s social media actually is social media. The President’s account wrote, the White House was told by ABC that his show was canceled. There again, I’ll let the lawyer’s parse the sentence. The sentence before is, I can’t believe ABC, fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back.
The White House was told by ABC that his show was canceled. I believe, personally, perhaps possibly maybe that the pronoun his is referring to Jimmy Kimmel. It’s possible that the President was referring to Henry Winkler at some point Happy Days was canceled. It’s possible that’s what he meant. But as I’m reading it, my non legal interpretation, personal opinion, what do I know, dummy in the basement, I think he’s referring to Jimmy Kimmel.
There, the Vice President said, what is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air? Zero? What government pressure if we brought to bair to tell people that they’re not allowed to speak their mind. Zero. We believe in free speech, and the Trump administration we’re fighting it every day to protect it.
Now compare that to the Biden administration. Now, Deadline got into an interesting business standpoint. Kimmel is back, but how long can next Door and Sinclair keep him sidelined. I’ve heard a lot of interesting things about this. One broadcast executive told Deadline it depends how crazy it gets.
It depends who fights the legal battle and whether ABC wants to go after them. The affiliates in some way, shape or form, how aggressive they want to get, ABC will turn the other cheek for a while until they don’t want to turn the other cheek anymore. A broadcast executive talked about a typical agreement. No, Normally, the local station has rights to preempt up to a certain amount of times, unless it’s at a national emergency. If the stations exceed that number, they lose rights to air that show, and the network can shift the show and its affiliated station elsewhere in a given market.
So, as I understand this listening to podcasts such as The Town, that number might be around fifteen. That you can just preempt Jimmy Kimmel’s show fifteen times because reasons, and then after that ABC could say you don’t want to air Kimmel, Okay, we’re giving it to the other channel, and then ABC can cut whatever deal they want with the other channel. There are exceptions, as I understand this, again a little outside my expertise here, maybe completely wrong, but as I understand it, say there was a terrible earthquake and you were doing earthquake coverage and therefore you didn’t want to air Jimmy Kimmel because the news superseded the Jimmy Kimmel show. That’s something you could do. There is a public interest cause, so you could say, Jimmy Kimmel’s not in the public interest, so that possibly, perhaps maybe could get view an out.
But I heard a counter argument that said, you’ve been airing Jimmy Kimmel twenty three years. Apparently it is in the public interest. So again we’ll let the lawyers fight that one out. One of the questions, could ABC tell these stations, all right, no Monday night football for you, no SEC football this weekend? Sucks to be you.
I believe that’s the same argument in reverse of what is the agreement between the affiliate and the station that they would have the rights. You can’t just take the stuff away. But again I’m not expert in this, but as a media executive, I do find it fascinating. Roseanne Barr not happy that Jimmy Kimmel is back. You may recall ABC removed Roseanne Barr from the air a few years back.
She says, it just shows how they think I got my whole life ruin, no forgiveness, all of my work stolen, and called a racist for time and eternity for racially misgendering someone. It’s a double standard, you may recall. In May twenty eighteen, Roseanne Barr published a social media post about former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. I’m going to read you of the words from the post. They are horrible.
I don’t come to offend. I’m gonna quote them verbatim. In the May twenty eighteen post, bar wrote the Jarrett was equivalent to quote Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby. Roseanne bar deleted and apologized for the comment. ABC canceled the Roseanne reboot.
Looking back at those days, Roseanne Barr claimed that Jimmy Kimmel called me a racist, even though I said repeatedly, which they repeatedly censored, that it was a mistake. I thought the woman was a white woman from Iran. And with everybody canceling Disney Plus because they were mad, this seems the perfect time to raise prices. Yeah, Disney Plus with ads going up two dollars a seat for just eleven ninety nine a month. You can get Disney Plus with ads.
If you want no ads, it’s going up three dollars to eighteen ninety nine starting October twenty First Way to Read the Room, and there were reports that some self described pro democracy organication sent a letter to Bob Iger on behalf of two shareholders demanding details about ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel. The letter on behalf of the Disney shareholders requested the production of internal Disney documents and communications related to the decision to take Kimmel off the air for a week. Having been at big companies over the years, boy, I hope nobody wrote an email, and I hope nobody text. I hoped everybody picked up the phone. There.
The groups contend to Kimmel’s suspension as a potential violation of Disney’s obligations to shareholders. The group claims that Disney stock suffered significant declines. Shares of Disney dropped three point three percent from September eighteen to the twenty third. However, closed up one point zero five percent on Wednesday. Earlier today, at noon, I dropped a different bonus episode with John Marcos SIRESI.
I hope you check that one out. This will be it for today, barring scary thing happening that I’m not expecting, and then we’ll try and get back into a normal mode with a normal episode on Friday morning and Saturday morning and Sunday morning, and then Sunday afternoon, we’ll do the bonus with Julie Siebaugh, who produced the Marin documentary. I really appreciate you guys listening. This is a lot of fun to do, and I’ll see you tomorrow