Matt Belloni, the host of the Town podcast and the author of Puck\u2019s What I\u2019m Hearing newsletter, joins the show to talk about Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s punishment, what happened behind the scenes at ABC and Disney, Bob Iger\u2019s legacy, and what this means at a moment when media companies are bending the knee to the Trump administration, which is clearly using its position to punish free speech despite rising to power by promising to do the opposite.<\/p>\n
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at\u00a0PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.<\/p>\n
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Matt Belloni
Producer: Devon Baroldi<\/p>\n
In the following excerpt, Derek talks to Matt Belloni about what was happening behind the scenes at ABC and Disney before Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended.<\/p>\n
Derek Thompson: Matt Belloni, welcome to the show.<\/p>\n
Matt Belloni: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Big week.<\/p>\n
Thompson: Huge week. So when these kinds of stories break, I feel like you often get analysis from some folks where the question of what exactly happened is muddled by the question of whether it\u2019s right or whether it\u2019s moral. And to the best of our ability, I want to start by literally just understanding what the hell just happened, blow for blow: what the conversations were like inside Disney, why they made this decision. And then once we have a satisfying blow-by-blow, we\u2019ll get into what it means and just how extraordinary this moment is in American politics and media history. So in my opening that I just recorded, I walked people through the publicly known facts, the most publicly known facts: Kimmel\u2019s comments on Monday, the reaction that billows on Tuesday morning on social media of conservatives being upset about this, and then finally the cancellation or suspension. What I want to know from you is what happened behind the scenes. When Disney and ABC executives are huddling to discuss the fallout of Kimmel\u2019s comments and the blowback, what are they talking about? What are they looking at and listening to when they made this decision?<\/p>\n
Belloni: Well, just the precursor here is that it\u2019s not unusual for TV executives to be concerned about something that happened on their late-night show the night before. I used to joke with people at HBO that in the pre-internet days or the pre\u2013social media days, they would monitor the phone calls on Saturdays because it was always people who were pissed about Bill Maher and something Bill Maher said. So these days, obviously, that\u2019s amped way up\u2014the polarization of the electorate, and the ability of anyone to comment whenever they want on social media\u2014so ABC and Kimmel often deal with this. What happened here was in this environment\u2014with the Charlie Kirk assassination, and all of the reactions, and people getting fired at the local school, and Matthew Dowd being taken off MSNBC for something he said\u2014they were extra sensitive about what happened on Kimmel on Monday night.<\/p>\n
And you said what the comment was; it is what it is. The reaction on social media was pretty significant, and you had a lot of, not just the right-wing trolls, you had a lot of mainstream conservative commentators who were pretty critical of what Kimmel had said. And we can get into whether they were disingenuous or whether they were trying to fan the flames to go after someone that has been a target of the right for a long time. But ABC was concerned. Then the FCC chair went on a podcast and said that Disney needs to do something about this. He said \u2026 \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way\u201d\u2014very explicit in his threat.<\/p>\n
Thompson: Wait, what does that mean to you? What does that mean to you, \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way\u201d?<\/p>\n
Belloni: Meaning you can take action against Kimmel, or we can force you to take action, and we have the levers to make sure that you will take action. And we can get into what those levers are. Obviously, the ABC stations are all licensed by the FCC. Disney owns many of those stations, especially in the big markets\u2014Chicago, New York, L.A. And they have relationships with these affiliates, they\u2019re called, where there are station groups that agree to air the ABC content for a fee and are affiliated with them but are not owned by Disney and ABC. So that\u2019s the environment. And once [FCC chair] Brendan Carr went after the show and went after Disney in particular, conversations started, meaning we have to address this on the show. And Kimmel said, \u201cOK, I\u2019m going to address it on the show.\u201d And I think he knew in advance that he had to do that. And they went back and forth, all day they went back and forth on what Kimmel would say.<\/p>\n
And I reported in my Puck newsletter what Kimmel\u2019s response was going to be. And it was going to be a clarification that, no, he did not mean to say that the shooter of Charlie Kirk was a MAGA person. What his point was is that people were using the shooting to try to dunk and gain political points, and they don\u2019t know, we don\u2019t know, and it\u2019s all up in the air. I\u2019m paraphrasing, obviously. In addition to that, in addition to clarifying what he actually said, the comments went further. He went after people on social media who have, in his mind, mischaracterized this for their own political points. He specifically named Fox News and their whole fair and balanced thing, and mocked that. He made a number of comments in his draft of the monologue that ABC executives decided or thought would be further incendiary\u2014meaning would make the situation worse, not better.<\/p>\n
They would\u2019ve preferred that this be a\u2014not full-throated, because you don\u2019t want to lose your audience\u2014but an apology. I should have been clearer, it was ambiguous to the point where it allowed people to run with this, I\u2019m sorry, move on. Kimmel didn\u2019t want to do that. And I understand that. He didn\u2019t do anything wrong, per se. My take is that there are a lot of people that saw that before it aired, and you would think maybe a producer would be like, \u201cOK, let\u2019s retape that, let\u2019s make it clear what you\u2019re actually saying so there is no ambiguity. We know this is hypersensitive. We know that you have a target on your back. Let\u2019s make this extra clear.\u201d That didn\u2019t happen. And I think, in retrospect, Disney regrets that that didn\u2019t happen. Kimmel has been pretty steadfast that he did nothing wrong, won\u2019t apologize.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t asking for an outright, like, This is my bad, and I did something wrong. But they were asking for some version of a clarification, slash, Yeah, I could see how this would be misconstrued. So once Kimmel and the late-night executive Rob Mills couldn\u2019t get to an agreement, Dana Walden got involved. She\u2019s the head of the Disney television unit that oversees everything from ABC News to FX to Hulu, all the television content. She\u2019s one of the no. 2s at the company that is potentially going to succeed Bob Iger as CEO. She has a longtime relationship with Kimmel, and even they couldn\u2019t get to an agreement, and the clock was ticking. They usually tape that show about 4:30 in the afternoon, I believe, and they had to make a decision because Kimmel wanted to say what he wanted to say. They had people in line to come into the studio to watch the show.<\/p>\n
Thompson: Wow.<\/p>\n
Belloni: So they had to figure out what they were going to do. And with Iger, and Iger approved this\u2014and he\u2019s not out of this\u2014I know they often try to protect him, but he made this decision as well. They chose to punt, essentially say, We are suspending the show indefinitely. Didn\u2019t say \u201ctemporarily.\u201d Said \u201cindefinitely.\u201d And behind the scenes, they said, We need to figure out what to do here. Now, the result of that was that it unleashed this global torrent of backlash because of the First Amendment issues, because of all the stuff that everybody\u2019s written about.<\/p>\n
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