Less than one week after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel amid pressure from the FCC, the network announced today that the comedian’s talk show will return to the airwaves on Tuesday.
The decision comes just one day after President Donald Trump blasted Kimmel as “untalented” during his speech at the memorial for Charlie Kirk.
ABC’s parent company Disney confirmed the news in a statement issued Monday afternoon.
Disney announced Kimmel’s return to the airwaves
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the Walt Disney Company said in a press release.
“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement continued.
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
The decision is sure to be a controversial one, as many Americans still believe that Kimmel’s joke about Trump’s reaction to the shooting was somehow sufficient cause to prompt a government intervention.
But for the most part, the move was an unpopular one, that led even staunch Trump allies like Ted Cruz to speak out against what he described as a dangerous revocation of First Amendment rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union issued an open letter signed by more than 400 celebrities, in which Disney’s decision was characterized as a “dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.”
“We the people must never accept government threats to our freedom of speech,” the letter says.
“Efforts by leaders to pressure artists, journalists, and companies with retaliation for their speech strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country.”
The list of stars who signed the letter included such names as Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Selena Gomez, Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Joaquin Phoenix, Ben Stiller, Meryl Streep, and Kerry Washington.
“You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian, criminal administration in the Oval Office,” ex-late night host David Letterman remarked, according to NBC News.
Kimmel has yet to address ABC’s decision publicly, but you can be sure he’ll share his thoughts during his opening monologue tomorrow night.
We will have further updates on this developing story as new information becomes available.