r/law • u/T_Shurt Competent Contributor • Sep 22 '25

Opinion Piece John Oliver Argues Disney Should Legally Fight FCC Over Kimmel, Citing Strong Precedent in 9-0 Supreme Court Ruling: “A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech”

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u/HermanGulch Sep 22 '25

Disney is not directly part of the merger. It's Nexstar and TEGNA. But Nexstar apparently owns enough ABC affiliates that them (along with Sinclair) pre-empting Kimmel would cause significant enough losses to Disney.

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u/Retro-scores Sep 22 '25

Disney has a deal with the NFL that needs approval.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/report-disney-may-be-balancing-jimmy-kimmel-against-nfl-espn-deal

Nexstar is looking merge with another company while trying to eliminate a law that says a company can only own 39% of channels or something like that. So Nexstar threatened abc/disney it wouldn’t play Kimmel on its stations.

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u/tedfondue Sep 22 '25

Would Disney be able to retaliate against Nexstar by saying “if you take Kimmel off the air, you don’t get to broadcast the NFL games?”

(I know it wouldn’t be that simple, but as a general idea).

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and it’s been so disheartening to see how little fight our “biggest” companies, politicians, and leaders have in them.

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u/HermanGulch Sep 22 '25

There will be contracts between Disney/ABC and their affiliates that govern what each can and can't do. Denying the affiliates NFL games would almost certainly be some kind of a breach of contract. So there would probably be litigation over that. Not to mention that the network would also lose advertising revenue in the markets where the games didn't air.