Brendan Carr later denied threatening to revoke ABC affiliates’ licenses if Disney refused to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live!, according to an indexed excerpt of an Ars Technica article. But a September 18, 2025 Senate letter quotes Carr warning ABC affiliates that the FCC could do things “the easy way or the hard way” and that more FCC work lay ahead unless they changed their conduct and acted on Kimmel. Those remarks support the senators’ description of pressure on the affiliates; they do not establish that the FCC formally moved to revoke a license.
What Carr said about ABC affiliates and Kimmel
Carr made the remarks on the Benny Johnson podcast on September 17, 2025, after Jimmy Kimmel’s comments following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. A letter sent the next day by senators on the Senate Commerce Committee quotes Carr saying, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” It also quotes him warning that “there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead” unless ABC affiliates “find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel[.]”
The wording matters. Carr’s quoted remarks connect possible FCC work to what licensed ABC affiliates did about the program. The senators interpreted that as a threat. An indexed Ars Technica excerpt says Carr later claimed he had never threatened to revoke TV licenses if Disney refused to suspend Kimmel. The available excerpt does not establish the precise context or full wording of that denial.
What happened to the show afterward
The September 18 Senate letter says Nexstar announced it would take Kimmel off the air, followed by Disney’s indefinite suspension of the show. That documents the sequence as the senators presented it; it does not, by itself, prove Carr’s remarks caused either decision.
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A September 24 letter from Sen. Maria Cantwell says ABC had returned the show to air while Sinclair continued preempting it on its affiliates. Cantwell’s letter reports that 32 Nexstar ABC affiliates and 39 Sinclair affiliates were involved in the preemption. Those are counts stated in the letter, not independently verified station-market or audience measurements.
Did the FCC revoke a license?
The cited records describe Carr’s remarks, affiliate preemptions, Disney’s suspension of the show, and a dispute over the FCC’s role. They do not document a completed license revocation or a formal FCC order revoking an ABC station’s license. A warning about possible regulatory consequences and an agency action are different things.
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What the senators argued—and what that establishes
The September 18 letter characterizes Carr’s comments as a threat and warns that the FCC must not become “a roving press censor.” Those are the senators’ constitutional and political arguments, not a court ruling. A separate September 2025 Senate letter also raises First Amendment concerns; neither letter is a judicial determination that Carr’s remarks violated the Constitution.
The letters also reproduce Carr’s earlier statements in favor of political satire and free speech. They attribute to him a February 20, 2020 post describing satire as a way to hold those in power accountable, and a November 29, 2022 post stating, “Free speech is not a threat to democracy—censorship is.” The contrast may inform readers’ assessment of his later comments, but the posts do not resolve what the FCC could lawfully do in this episode.
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What the public record supports
- The Senate Commerce Committee’s September 18 letter preserves Carr’s “easy way or the hard way” remark and his warning of additional FCC work unless affiliates changed conduct and acted on Kimmel.
- The September 24 letter from Sen. Maria Cantwell reports the later affiliate preemptions and the counts of 32 Nexstar and 39 Sinclair affiliates.
- The senators’ letters document their interpretation and the sequence they describe, but are advocacy documents rather than neutral adjudications.
- The Ars Technica material available here is an indexed excerpt about Carr’s later denial; the full article and the original podcast recording were not available in the cited material. The denial’s complete context therefore cannot be assessed here.
On the evidence available, Carr’s denial sits uneasily beside remarks that explicitly linked possible FCC work to ABC affiliates’ conduct around Kimmel. That supports the headline’s characterization as an editorial judgment, not a finding by a court or proof that the FCC revoked—or formally ordered the revocation of—any station license.
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