When I heard Jimmy Kimmel was getting canceled, my immediate reaction was based on the all-time sum total of my Kimmel viewing having been five, maybe ten, minutes in snippet form while channel and/or YouTube surfing. I pretty much abandoned late-night TV when Johnny Carson retired and David Letterman didn't get picked as his replacement on The Tonight Show.
Looking back, I see that he was on a show I watched occasionally, Win Ben Stein's Money, a loooong time ago. I remember the show; his role in it, whatever that may have been, not so much.
So Kimmel's cancellation affects me not at all in terms of viewing habits. I've never been a fan and that's not likely to change. To the extent that I've noticed him at all, my perception of him is that he's mildly annoying, but I haven't noticed him enough to have a strong opinion either way.
I'm opposed to anti-trust law on principle, so I also have no particular gripe about the pressure brought to bear on Disney/ABC by Sinclair and Nexstar, which respectively own 38 and 28 ABC affiliate TV stations, to dump Kimmel's show. It does make a good market case for content providers getting their stuff to viewers directly instead of through intermediary parties who can make silly demands and make those demands stick, but the market is at least beginning to handle that task.
As for Kimmel himself, I see that his salary in recent times has come to $16 million a year. We needn't worry that he'll be missing any meals before he finds another gig.
My only real take-away from this teapot tempest is that Brendan Carr should probably be deported to Cuba or North Korea, where his views on government control of media would be a better fit.
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