{"id":155031,"date":"2025-09-19T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/155031\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T19:46:08","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-could-just-go-online-but-thats-not-safe-from-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/155031\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel Could Just Go Online \u2014 but That’s Not Safe From Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Kimmel remains off the air<\/a>, following a meeting with Disney executives that reportedly didn’t go well. Maybe he’ll never come back.<\/p>\n

“So what? It’s 2025. Why doesn’t he just go to a streamer or the internet?”<\/p>\n

I’ve heard a lot of that the last few days \u2014 from colleagues, pundits, and people like Bill Simmons<\/a>, who has worked for Disney multiple times \u2014 including as a writer for Kimmel \u2014 and went on to launch his own company, to great success<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are two answers to that. The first one is short: Yes, Jimmy Kimmel could absolutely go to the internet and start podcasting or streaming or whatever he wanted to do. He could set up shop immediately.<\/p>\n

The second one is where it gets murky: Yes, Jimmy Kimmel doesn’t need to be on TV anymore. But in 2025, going to the internet \u2014 whether it’s his own thing that he sets up for himself, or a deal with a streamer or a podcast network, isn’t a cure-all.<\/p>\n

Because the internet isn’t a magic safe space. It doesn’t shield you from politics \u2014 and it definitely doesn’t shield you from a White House that’s decided you’re an enemy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is true that Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission head who encouraged Disney and ABC broadcast stations to “take action<\/a>” against Kimmel, doesn’t have the authority to regulate what happens on the internet. (Though the Project 2025<\/a> chapter that Carr wrote about the FCC says the agency should try to influence Big Tech companies, anyway.)<\/p>\n

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But as we’ve noted before, the Trump administration continually tries to find novel legal challenges and avenues to change the behavior of institutions it wants to control.<\/p>\n

And when that fails, there’s just brute force. In August, Trump demanded that Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign<\/a> because of his ties to China; within weeks, Trump had a deal that gave the US a 10% stake in Intel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So that means if Kimmel hung out his own shingle, to, say, start a podcast, he’d still be vulnerable to political and legal pressure \u2014 if Trump wanted to focus on the companies that worked with him.<\/p>\n

That same dynamic could also depress the market for any company that would think of signing Kimmel to a big-money deal, like the ones that Amazon, Netflix, and others have offered to some talkers. The same goes for potential advertisers: Yes, Kimmel could draw a big audience \u2014 but would it be worth the possibility of a Bud Light-style pressure campaign<\/a>, egged on by the White House?<\/p>\n

Because Kimmel’s problem isn’t the FCC, or even ABC. It’s that the most powerful person in the country has decided he’s an enemy. And in 2025, there isn’t a platform \u2014 TV, streaming, or podcasting \u2014 that can guarantee protection from that kind of pressure.<\/p>\n

The internet may be bigger than broadcast. In the new Trump era, it may not be safer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel remains off the air, following a meeting with Disney executives that reportedly didn’t go well. Maybe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-155031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}