Jimmy Kimmel Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Just two days after Donald Trump was elected to the White House for a second term, Perry Sook held an earnings call with Wall Street analysts. As the founder of Nexstar Media, the former West Virginia news anchor, now 66, had risen to become one of the most powerful, if least known, moguls in broadcast television. His company owns local stations from Tampa to Burlington to Portland, Oregon (and KTLA in Los Angeles), in addition to cable-news outlet NewsNation, Congressional trade The Hill and a majority stake in The CW. On that November Thursday, Sook had a fervent wish for how the coverage of the second Trump administration would go. He hoped, he said, the country would soon be "eliminating the level of activist journalism out there." Related Stories TV Seth Meyers Stresses Value of Free Speech Amid Jimmy Kimmel Suspension: "We're Gonna Keep Doing Our Show the Way We've Always Done It" TV Stephen Colbert Defends Jimmy Kimmel, Slams Disney Amid Show Suspension On Wednesday Sook decided to undertake that activist-elimination mission himself, even if it involved more than a little intervention on his own part. Not long after FCC chair Brendan Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson that he was putting Kimmel on notice for the host's comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson, Sook and Nexstar broadcasting division president Andrew Alford decided to inform Disney executives their company would be pre-empting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on the 28 ABC stations it owned, everywhere from Nashville to Salt Lake City to Hartford to New Orleans. Smaller competitor Sinclair followed, and Disney soon had little choice but to cancel Wednesday's show and put Kimmel on indefinite leave. "Mr. Kimmel's comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located," Alford said in announcing the move. The decision also notably comes, however, just weeks after Nexstar announced a $6.2 billion acquisition of rival Tegna, which would give it 64 additional news stations in 51 markets to go with the 200 owned and partner stations it already has, and bring the company's market coverage of the U.S. to about 80 percent. And current FCC rules cap any one company's share at 39 percent. Carr and the FCC, in other words, would need to loosen regulations to allow the merger to go through. Nexstar and Tegna will file their application with the FCC for the merger by the end of the month, according to an SEC filing. The Kimmel episode highlights the freewheeling way Carr has wielded power since the FCC commissioner was named chair by Trump after the election - and, more broadly, how even just the specter of that power often influences media owners and leads to the quashing of critical voices. Despite the timing of the announcement right after the Carr comments, Nexstar said in a statement Thursday that it made the decision on its own. "The decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision." A Nexstar spokesman did not respond to a request for more specific comment. For some watchdogs, the Nexstar move parallels the decision by Paramount to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump that he had filed against 60 Minutes as the company's acquisition by David Ellison's Skydance hung in the balance. That deal was approved not long after by Carr's FCC. "When you have conglomerates with mergers and other kinds of business that need to be approved by regulators, it gives the regulators power that this administration seems all too willing to use," said Samuel G. Freedman, a professor emeritus at Columbia Journalism School, where he taught journalism ethics, among other subjects. Combine that power with acquiescence by a media company, Freedman said, and it can lead to a chilling effect on the First Amendment. "I think you can categorize all this with the failure of institutions since Trump's second term began. It's hard to feel anything but anger and sadness about what this portends." The possibility that the Kimmel fracas was merger-related even reached the doorstep of the Hollywood Teamsters, generally a less liberal group who nonetheless "condemned" the Nexstar, Sinclair and ABC/Disney moves and collared what it said was the culprit. "We are witnessing a dangerous trend of corporations trying to fast-track mergers through the back door," the group said in a statement Thursday. Carr, who has already opened an investigation into Disney and ABC's DEI policies, has long