Brian Stelter

It's more complicated, but I do believe people dropping those subscriptions did make a difference.

Let's start from the premise that Disney always wanted to bring Kimmel back on the show.

It's not as if the executives who run Disney, like Bob Iger, the CEO, and his deputy Dana Walden, it's not like they're secret Trumpers who are big fans of MAGA media and want to turn ABC into Fox News.

That is far from the case.

All right, Bob Iger donates to Democrats.

He thought about running for president against Trump.

Dana Walden is known for being best buds with Kamala Harris.

These executives not only love Jimmy Kimmel personally, they are also politically in, I would say, some sort of sync with Jimmy Kimmel.

But they looked around, they react very quickly to pressure last week.

And that's what they did, right?

They reacted by pulling the show and they wanted to find a path forward.

It took them a few days.

And I think the audience pressure, Dan, the consumer pressure, it did make a big difference, but they always wanted to bring the show back anyway.

Well, look, I was skeptical.

I thought it was unlikely his show was going to be back on broadcast TV because I was thinking to myself, these station owners were not going to let it go back.

They were too fearful of the Trump administration.

They were too concerned about pressure from Trump and Brendan Carr.

I think it is important there was this groundswell of public concern, all these free speech groups, all these First Amendment experts, all of these random ordinary consumers, right?

All these protesters outside Disneyland.

It's never a good look for Disney when you have free speech protesters outside Disneyland.