Broadcast TV Is a ‘Melting Ice Cube.’ Kimmel Just Turned Up the Heat

Jimmy Kimmel came back ABC this week. Sort About a quarter of the ABC’s normal audience did not see the talk show host this week, then the ABC associate Sinklair and Nexster two large owners refused to carry the show. The companies that were leaned on the right were clearly felt that Kimmel’s joke-which included some controversial information was included-so apologized that they could not reveal their audience to a comedian. They were also the first organization to pull the plug on Kimmel after the Federal Communication Commission’s chair threatened to take action. This means that even the stations that carried the show – as well as the OwC owner of the ABC – it supports the shining of an official officer that seems interested in using its capabilities to silence critics.

Who has the power. FCC broadcast licens can allow and withdraw if the stations do not serve the public interest. This is a sign of a period when practically 100 percent viewers got their show on the air through television antenna. Local TV stations were given their programs very limited broadcast spectral spectrum for beam and had to meet some values ​​to maintain that opportunity. But that era has passed. Local television stations now reach their audience through cable or internet bundles. Also, the networks flow through their programming through growing applications. Nevertheless, Car still has the ability to bull on network and allied companies by threatening to get licenses.

It raises a question: What is the benefit of maintaining the current system? It is definitely a mess for commerce like Disney and its fellow network, which own NBC and paramount, which owns CBS. Todding companies that are good for the free-spot-enhanced regulators and the ABC programming censors, perhaps to say goodbye to the disney’s programming stations. Disney already streams the hulu (which controls it) and the shows on their own app. There have been examples of long -term local stations owned and operated by networks. What if the Disney or Comcast Agreement with Authorized Companies related to hassle and then start their own local stations without using spectrum both the app and simply channel? Let Nexter and Sinclayer look for their own programming, where they can create content for any standard. Disney can bypasses airwives happily without thinking about the threat of the FCC. They could even tell them Seven dirty wordsAnd!

I passed a former FCC Commissioner who mentioned the existing agreement and some possible problems like this. But generally, he agrees that the idea was not only understandable but Already at speedOn the largest scale. “ESPN and everything streaming Disney is doing it with the IT FCC Chairman’s former Chief of Staff Blair Levin is more sympathetic to my notion.” A melting Ice Cube, “He says only a question that it will take five years? Five years?

So my idea is less novel than me. The Kimel connd has just removed the heat in a dumid part of the frosty water. Even when I chatted with former FCC officials, an investment bank that tracks the media, Nidham, has given a note that a more rigorous action has been proposed. Disney, it said, should Start streaming instantaneously The full schedule! The money that it will make from advertising or subscription will be higher than any loss and the Disney market cap will increase.

I don’t expect it to happen right now. Running relations between multi -contract and allied agencies and networks lock for some time in the current situation. But when I asked an executive from an organization that owned TV stations that the current system was sustainable, I did not get the pusback I expected. He told me, “This is a real question,” it has become more full of acknowledging the relationship of late.