With Disney/ABC’s “courageous” decision to remember that there are guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Constitution, and end the suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel Live” this evening, the two large broadcast groups that said they wouldn’t carry the show are sticking with their decisions.

Unsurprisingly, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of ABC affiliates, quickly followed ABC’s announcement that Kimmel would be returning to the airwaves with their own version of “not on our airwaves, he won’t.” And just a short time ago, Nexstar Media confirmed that “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will not air on their ABC stations when it returns tonight at 11:35 pm (Eastern/Pacific).

Perry Sook and Company must have known that this was a possible outcome. And the fact that they have decided not to back down speaks volumes about the corner they have painted themselves into by heeding FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s not-so-subtle threats last week.

Of course, Carr himself has now pulled the ultimate backtrack in claiming that Kimmel’s suspension was due to his ratings, and certainly not because of anything he said—even if it may have sounded like the worst dialogue ever written in a gangster movie. Even Republican Senator Ted Cruz called the commissioner out on that bit of apparent overreach.

But the decision-making today at Nexstar’s corporate HQ was never going to be particularly easy. On the one hand, they could stick to their “principled” decision, which would keep Jimmy Kimmel from offending the delicate sensibilities of their local audiences in places like Nashville, Salt Lake City, New Haven, and New Orleans, where some of their ABC stations are based.

Or they could have followed ABC’s lead and allowed Kimmel back on the air tonight. Then they would have faced the potential wrath of “Godfather” Carr, who would follow through on his threat to “do things the hard way” and take his sweet time in allowing and approving the proposed acquisition of group owner TEGNA by Nexstar for 6-plus billion dollars.

Because the last thing that Perry Sook wanted was to fall into the same bureaucratic trap that Standard General’s Soo Kim found himself in when his Standard General tried to take over TEGNA, an 8-plus billion dollar deal that collapsed just over two years ago. To add insult to injury, Standard General also had to pay TEGNA $136 million in termination fees to exit the agreement. 

That deal also didn’t require the FCC to make a significant change in lifting the 39% cap rule, which prevents any one owner from controlling local television stations that reach over 39% of the country’s television viewers. Of course, that rule is mostly a joke now, as large groups like Nexstar and Sinclair have gotten around it for years by having so-called “sidecar” companies own the stations that would put the main company over the cap. Then the friendly “sidecar” owners sign agreements turning over the operation of their stations back to the larger group owners.

This explains why there are companies that own local TV stations, such as White Knight Broadcasting, Deerfield Media, Cunningham Broadcasting, and Howard Stirk Holdings, among others. And why they all happen to have either “shared services arrangements” (SSAs) or “joint services arrangements” (JSAs) with the larger group owners, who would be well over the 39% cap if they owned the additional stations.

Even crazier, sometimes these “sidecar” stations are in the same markets as the larger company’s stations, which also provides a way to skirt the FCC’s rules that prevent one owner from having two of the “big four” network affiliates (ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC) in the same city. The ever-vigilant FCC has looked the other way on these convenient arrangements for years—under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

But the current administration has been championing deregulation in nearly every aspect of the federal government, including at the FCC. Carr has been dangling the prospect of eliminating the ownership cap for months now. It had been widely expected that some action would take place on proposed deregulation moves as soon as the FCC’s upcoming public meeting on September 30th.

One might wonder if Nexstar had decided to return Kimmel to the airwaves, that “something unfortunate might happen” and that deregulation could perhaps “slip off the meeting agenda.” (It really helps if you read that last sentence with your best impression of Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, or our personal favorite, the late James Gandolfini.)

Speaking of would-be “tough guys,” the leadership at Sinclair Broadcast Group wasted no time in coming out a couple of hours after Disney CEO Bob Iger found his spine on Monday, making it clear that they would not be carrying the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on any of its ABC stations. That would include their ABC affiliate in the nation’s capital, WJLA-TV on Channel 7, the station that touts itself as "On Your Side.”

That will prevent anyone in Washington from having to endure watching Jimmy Kimmel, including the FCC Chairman or the Commander-in-Chief.

After all, SBG had said that it wouldn’t air Kimmel until he both apologized for his original monologue about the assassin of Charlie Kirk and made a donation to Kirk’s nonprofit (though very political) organization, Turning Point USA.

While we expect that Kimmel will provide some mea culpa in his return about his original statement that triggered the backlash that led to Disney’s decision to take him off the air, we’d be shocked if he ever signs a check, as Sinclair is demanding.

Sinclair is in a far less vulnerable position with the FCC. At least, at the moment. It has been slowly buying up the stations owned by its “sidecar” partners, in the belief that the deregulation-minded FCC will allow them to own those stations in “the very near future.” But those sales still need FCC approval because they involve the transfer of broadcast licenses.

However, recent developments may change the TV ownership landscape once again. And that takes us to Miami.

Just last month, the ABC affiliation moved in Miami. It went from its longtime home of WPLG, known as Local 10 in South Florida, to the new ABC Miami. ABC Miami is now broadcast on over-the-air channel 7.2, which is a digital subchannel of WSVN, the Sunbeam Television-owned FOX affiliate in South Florida. (The station is also seen on low-power Channel 18, WDFL-LD, which gave ABC Miami carriage on local cable systems. Sunbeam is leasing WDFL for this purpose.)

What all this means is that any one station could follow the ABC deal with Sunbeam to create "ABC Miami", and carry two network signals on its digital channels. What makes this interesting is that if Sinclair and Nexstar continue to keep “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air, each night they do so could be considered a “pre-emption” of the network programming. In recent years, network affiliation contracts have tightened the number of times an affiliate station can “pre-empt” the network without incurring some penalty, including potentially losing the affiliation. So, each night that ABC puts an episode of Kimmel on the network feed and a station chooses not to carry it, they risk violating their network contract. (Note that there are usually exceptions to this pre-emption language for breaking news coverage and the like.)

Not that long ago, when a local station chose not to carry a network program, the network could offer it to another station in the market. This was why, occasionally, if an affiliate didn’t carry a network show, it might appear on another TV station in the market. Now, however, it is not out of the question that if WJLA pre-empts “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for more than a couple of days, they would have exceeded their allowed number of network pre-emptions permitted in their contract, and Disney/ABC could decide to put the show on another station in DC.

Or, if things get really contentious, Disney/ABC could even move their entire network to another station—or one of their digital subchannels. It’s probably unlikely that NBC or FOX would make a home for a new “ABC Washington” on their owned stations on Channel 4 or 5 there.

But just up the dial is Channel 9, WUSA, the CBS affiliate that TEGNA owns. TEGNA never publicly threatened not to carry Jimmy Kimmel, and it owns several major ABC affiliates. Does anyone think that they would take a call in TEGNA’s nearby Virginia headquarters, to discuss the possibility of having a new “ABC Washington” on, say (and we’re just speculating here) maybe a Channel 9.2?

Well, this situation could get even more interesting. We’d tell you to stay tuned, except we don’t know where to tell you to tune in.

Not quite yet, anyway.

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