The fate of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the U.S. broadcast business may be on the line, but Kimmel himself seems to have career options in the very likely event that ABC doesn’t welcome his late night TV show back to its airwaves.
Earlier this week, hours after news broke that Disney/ABC planned to suspend the comedian and his Monday-Friday series indefinitely, this reporter received a direct message from a co-founder of technology shop Kiswe Mobile Inc. The company is well known for building direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming channels for professional sports teams including the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz, as well as major K-pop entities including Big Hit Entertainment.
The executive asked to be connected to “Dan K,” or Daniel Kellison, a longtime Kimmel collaborator who has worked with a number of famous comedians to establish presences on YouTube and other digital channels.
“We can launch a Kimmel-branded D2C site in a week given the news today,” the Kiswe co-founder said.
D2C ascent
The bankruptcy collapse of Diamond Sports Group two years ago forced sports teams like the Suns and Jazz to think of newer, more direct ways to reach their audiences. Kimmel and peer Stephen Colbert (who is in the same boat) might just be the first of many linear TV voices who look to D2C streaming channels to reach their fanbases with the age-old broadcast TV business crumbling away.
Like many such inquiries in the media, entertainment and technology spheres, the Kiswe inquiry might — or even probably — won’t go anywhere.
But it’s an indicator of the tectonic shifts affecting the broadcast and broader linear television businesses, changes that are only being further accelerated by the pressures being applied by the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Earlier this week, ABC announced that it was suspending Kimmel’s show indefinitely, following comments he made on his Monday evening broadcast about the man accused of murdering political activist Charlie Kirk.
Broadcaster Nexstar Media Group, which controls 32 ABC affiliate stations, and rival Sinclair Broadcast Group, which handles 38 ABC outlets, announced that they were pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off their air.
The moves came as both stations are trying to sidestep rules limiting station ownership. Both Nexstar and Sinclair are competing to buy rival Gray Television, and both station groups need the help of the FCC and its Trump-appointed chairman, Brendan Carr, to get that done. President Donald Trump has publicly declared that he’d like to see ABC’s broadcast license revoked.
Following news that Nexstar and Sinclair would suspend Kimmel, Carr announced that the FCC would look into the matter itself and take ABC’s license it it didn’t take care of Kimmel itself.
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr told the conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
Like Colbert, Kimmel was operating in a spot that was yielding less and less audience and advertising money for its network each year. Kimmel’s contract with ABC expires in May.
Daniel Frankel is the co-founder and CEO of Next TMT.