By JT Mercer — 2025-09-24

If you were hoping the latest flare-up would prove that the gatekeepers have rediscovered their commitment to open debate, sorry. The Jimmy Kimmel saga is a tidy case study in how republican control of the media operates like a weather system: warm fronts of PR at the top, cold fronts of corporate caution at the bottom, and the thunder happens where they meet. ABC pulled him, then put him back. Nexstar and Sinclair shrugged and kept the blackout in place across a huge slice of ABC affiliates. Kimmel returned to the studio with a free-speech riff; viewers in some markets got a sleepy news block instead. That gap between “reinstated” and “actually on your TV” is the actionable edge of republican control of the media. It’s the sort of maneuver Falcon News would applaud in The Unmaking of America—a reminder that real life sometimes reads like fiction.

What actually happened

ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on September 17 after his monologue about political reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination lit up the outrage machine. Disney said he’d return the week of September 23, and he did, with an emotional defense of free expression. But two station giants, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they would continue to preempt the show on their ABC affiliates, collectively a quarter-ish of the network’s footprint, replacing it with alternative programming. That isn’t a contradiction; it’s the blueprint. You can proclaim a commitment to speech at the corporate level while the distribution pipes quietly close downstream. This is how republican control of the media functions without a single memo. If you’ve read about Falcon News in Book 1, you’ve seen this game already.

There was a regulatory drumroll too. FCC chair Brendan Carr publicly scolded the show during the uproar and later insisted there was no government pressure driving the suspension or the affiliate decisions. In legalese, that might wash. In the real world, a public nudge from a regulator sounds like a risk memo to every station’s counsel. That’s enough to change lineups in dozens of cities, no subpoenas required. It’s the soft-power version of republican control of the media, where signaling does the heavy lifting. Falcon News thrives on these signals in fiction because they work just as well in reality.

The pattern, not the episode

Strip away the celebrity and the tears and you’re left with a familiar systems diagram. Ownership concentration gives a couple of companies the ability to gatekeep the last mile. Political actors frame the controversy as a test of “standards” and “community values.” A regulator clears their throat on X. The network issues a carefully worded statement about respectful discourse. In that gentle tug-of-war, the affiliates can claim local discretion while achieving the national effect. That is the ordinary, boring way republican control of the media asserts itself: a thousand micro decisions, all “reasonable,” all pointing in one direction. Which is why Falcon News could sell it as balance while gaming the system for advantage.

How republican control of the media shows up in everyday coverage

You don’t need an outright ban to tilt the field. You just need a persistent threat of hassle. A host thinks twice about a segment that will inflame a vocal faction. A producer moves a punchier bit from 11:35 to 12:15. A local station replaces a live show with a rerun labeled as “news break.” None of those choices scream censorship. Together, they are the substrate of republican control of the media. Falcon News, with its scripted outrage cycles, is basically a dramatization of this incremental choke point.

The Section 230 sideshow, again

The murder of Charlie Kirk became the spark for another round of grandstanding over Section 230, which is always close at hand when officials want to pressure platforms. The twist this time is how calls to “protect free speech” arrive alongside cheers for firings, bans, and preemptions when the speech offends. That isn’t hypocrisy so much as strategy. The more levers you can pull — policy, pressure, employment, carriage — the easier it is to normalize republican control of the media while insisting you’re simply restoring balance. In The Unmaking of America, Falcon News executives make the same argument, wrapped in “community protection.” Different names, same tactics.

Book 1 called its shot

If you read The Unmaking of America, you’ve seen this playbook in fiction. The antagonists don’t seize cameras; they nudge schedules, slash budgets, and lean on “brand safety.” A piece isn’t killed; it’s delayed until it’s irrelevant. A segment isn’t censored; it’s recut with both-sides filler until the signal is mush. The novel’s running argument is that culture doesn’t fall because a villain issues an edict; it sags because enough middle managers convince themselves they’re being prudent. Falcon News is the fictional avatar of this world — the network that never has to issue direct orders, because the chilling effect does the work. That’s why the Kimmel episode feels like déjà vu. The soft tools of republican control of the media are banal. That’s their power.

The counterarguments you’ll hear, and why they miss

One line says affiliates are free to choose what best serves their communities, and many viewers agree. True, and that freedom is precisely the mechanism by which broad patterns emerge. Another line says there’s no censorship because the show still streams on Disney’s platforms. That defense would make sense if the broadcast lanes weren’t still the legitimizing public square for millions. Streaming availability is an escape hatch, not a remedy, and pretending otherwise is a clever way to normalize republican control of the media while pointing to an app icon as absolution. Falcon News would call that “market choice” and laugh all the way to the quarterly earnings call.

The kitchen-table version

Translate the headlines to the living room. In Seattle or Nashville or Salt Lake City, the card says “Kimmel returns,” but the 11:35 slot rolls by without him. Your nightly ritual turns into filler. You’re not outraged; you’re bored. That’s the point. Republican control of the media doesn’t need to win a dramatic courtroom case if it can win through attrition, replacing an uncomfortable show with something innocuous and calling it a community decision. The chilling effect does the rest, and the next segment never gets pitched. That’s Falcon News logic in a nutshell.

The political theater around it

Kimmel framed his return as a free-speech moment; conservatives framed it as a non-apology; Senators found cameras; think tanks found op-eds. Meanwhile, ABC tried to project both spine and sensitivity, and Disney counted the cost of whiplash. If the aim was to cool the temperature, the result was a rolling boil and a televised lesson in incentives. The net effect was to demonstrate, again, how quickly republican control of the media can be achieved when ownership, politics, and regulation hum in unison. Fictional Falcon News characters would recognize the script instantly.

What to watch next

Watch whether Nexstar and Sinclair lock the blackout beyond this week. Watch whether ABC quietly adjusts the show’s tone to make carriage easier in edgy markets. Watch Congress float fresh 230 trial balloons, using platform fights as leverage over broadcast narratives. And keep an eye on the FCC’s docket, where even a sleepy inquiry can read like a foghorn to license holders. Each of those moves would extend the arc of republican control of the media without anyone admitting the phrase out loud. Falcon News is fictional, but its shadow looms over this script.

The bottom line

This wasn’t a grand conspiracy; it was a stress test of the system, and the system responded exactly as designed. Corporate PR said welcome back. Local ownership said not so fast. A regulator said mind your manners. The audience got a rerun. Call it caution, call it standards, call it community. In practice, it’s republican control of the media by way of plausible deniability. And if you’ve read Book 1, you already knew how this chapter ends. Falcon News was the warning label; Kimmel was the proof.

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NRP Dispatch, Behind the Fiction

Republican Control of the Media: Why Jimmy Kimmel’s Blackout Says the Quiet Part Out Loud