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ABC says “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to the airwaves next Tuesday – less than a week after Trump’s henchman Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said on a podcast that Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people”.
Carr threatened that the FCC could “do this the easy way or the hard way” – suggesting that either ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney, must remove Kimmel or the regulator would have “additional work” to do.
Why Walt Disney Company’s turnaround? As it limply explained: “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. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
But now, apparently, all is well.
“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.”
How lovely. How reasonable. How, well, kumbaya. All it took were some “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and everything returned to normal.
Don’t believe it. In the days since ABC’s decision, the blowback against Disney has been hurricane level.
At least five entertainment industry unions, with at least 400,000 workers, spoke out, with the screenwriters’ union charging Disney with “corporate cowardice”.
Celebrities Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep called out “government threats to our freedom of speech”.
Kimmel was supported by his late-night peers including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, all of whom blasted Disney and ABC with rapier-like humor.
Jon Stewart devoted his show to a takedown of Disney’s cowardice.
Disney talent was up in arms. Damon Lindelof, a creator of ABC’s Lost, threatened that if Kimmel’s show did not resume, he could not “in good conscience work for the company that imposed it”.
Michael Eisner, a former Disney CEO, added a rare public rebuke.
Even the rightwing Republican senator Ted Cruz expressed concern, suggested Carr was speaking like a mafioso and calling his threats to retaliate against media companies “dangerous as hell”.
“We should not be in this business,” Cruz said. “We should denounce it.”
By Monday, Carr himself was busy minimizing his role in the whole affair – denying he had threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC stations (it “did not happen in any way, shape or form”) – and putting the onus on Disney for having made a “business decision” in response to negative feedback from viewers.
“Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he’s in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” Carr claimed.
But the most intense pressure came from us – from Disney viewers and customers – who immediately began to cancel subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu and threaten a broader consumer boycott.
Some stars, such as Tatiana Maslany, star of Marvel’s Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Rosie O’Donnell urged people to cancel their subscriptions.
But the consumer boycott seems to have begun almost immediately.
Shortly after Kimmel’s suspension was announced, Disney stock dipped about 3.5%. It continued to trade lower in subsequent days. The loss in market value has amounted to about $4bn.
Investors got the message. Consumers were upset, which meant they’d buy fewer Disney products and services – which meant lower profits.
There’s never one single reason for the ups and downs in the value of a particular firm’s shares of stock, but the timing here has been almost exact.
Bottom line: We consumers have extraordinary power. We’re the vast majority. Like every other big corporation – especially one selling so directly to consumers – Disney relies on us.
Even if we can’t count on our elected politicians to protect our first amendment rights, we can rely on ourselves. When our outrage translates into withholding our consumer dollars, a big corporation like Disney is forced to listen – and respond.
Next time you’re feeling powerless, remember this.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now
