The support for Jimmy Kimmel keeps coming.
Wednesday, Kimmel’s friend and fellow media personality Howard Stern gave the late night host kudos for his first monologue back on the air following his temporary suspension. Stern also recalled his own fights with the FCC that led him to move “The Howard Stern Show” over to SiriusXM.
“ It was very traumatizing,” Stern said on his Wednesday broadcast. “I remember feeling very victimized because deep down in my heart, all I wanted to do was make people laugh. That’s all I wanted to do ever since I was a little kid.”
Stern’s own FCC troubles came in the ’90s and early 2000s, when radio license holders were fined $2.5 million for airing “The Howard Stern Show” content deemed to be “indecent.” While Stern noted that he and Kimmel’s situations are far from the same, he spoke about the isolation he felt when confronted with the pressure of governmental intervention.
“ I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders,” Stern said. “I said, ‘How am I gonna get out of this thing?’ Because you can’t win against the government when the government wants you. They have endless resources, our taxpayer money to attack you, to hire lawyers, to put pressure on the institutions that run broadcast facilities.”
ABC pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the air in mid-September after comments Kimmel made about the death of Charlie Kirk drew the ire of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Soon after Carr threatened ABC on the podcast, station partner Nexstar (currently in the process of a merger that requires FCC approval) announced they would pre-empt Kimmel’s broadcasts, followed by similar calls from ABC and Sinclair. ABC returned Kimmel to air on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump — whom Kimmel frequently mocks on-air — reveled in ABC’s initial decision, calling for Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to similarly be pulled. When Stephen Colbert’s show was canceled in July after he criticized the president and his parent company Paramount, Trump posted, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” Though Carr, JD Vance and other MAGA Republicans have stated that the FCC Chairman did not threaten ABC, Trump took to social media after Kimmel was reinstated to threaten the network again.
“The hypocrisy of it seemed to me that anybody could turn off the radio if they didn’t like me. And that whole argument that kids could be listening to me. They can’t be listening if their parents didn’t want. Maybe they could have, who knows?” Stern said of his own FCC run-ins. “But Jimmy’s situation was way worse, at least with my situation, you could make the argument with the kids or something if you really wanted to go down that lane. But with Jimmy’s, it was just out and out, ‘Hey, you’re making fun of the president. We don’t like it.’”
When Kimmel finally did return to air on Tuesday, he had a difficult needle to thread. Disney faced an online firestorm after deciding to suspend the late night host, leading to a boycott of their streaming services (one Stern participated in) and criticism over their capitulation to a threat to free speech. At the same time, not everyone was ready to forgive Kimmel, with station partners Nexstar and Sinclair still refusing to return him to their channels. Stern applauded his colleague for a deft return monologue — one nearly 30 minutes in length and with roughly 15 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.
“Imagine the pressure. I mean, he had to come out and be the face of free speech, plus he’s representing Disney and plus he’s supposed to be f–king funny. That’s an impossible task. It is not easy,” Stern said. “Well done, Jimmy. You did a great job. Very, very good.” You can watch the clip below.
