America tuned in this week expecting to see Jimmy Kimmel shuffle back onto their screens after his suspension — but for millions of viewers, the comeback never happened. Instead, local ABC stations across the country made a stunning choice: they blacked out Jimmy Kimmel Live! and replaced it with wall-to-wall Charlie Kirk tributes.
Yes, in a twist worthy of its own late-night sketch, the affiliates decided that The Charlie Kirk Show, complete with reruns of Turning Point USA speeches and slow-motion flag montages, was a better fit for the American people than another round of Kimmel’s monologues about politics, celebrities, and random YouTube clips.
It started in Salt Lake City, where KSL Channel 5 announced it wouldn’t air Kimmel’s return. Instead, it scheduled a “Patriotic Hour with Charlie Kirk,” a special program featuring old clips of Kirk debating college sophomores about capitalism.
Within hours, stations in Ohio, Florida, and Texas followed suit. “Our viewers told us loud and clear: less Jimmy, more Charlie,” said one station manager in Dallas. “Frankly, people would rather watch a PowerPoint presentation about tax reform than hear another Kimmel Trump joke.”
By midweek, the “Affiliate Rebellion” had spread to nearly half of ABC’s regional partners. In Pittsburgh, WPXI swapped Kimmel for Charlie Kirk: Forever in Our Hearts, a half-hour documentary narrated by Tucker Carlson. In Orlando, the slot was filled with a live performance of Jason Aldean singing “Try That in a Small Town (Kirk Memorial Edition).”
Executives at Disney, ABC’s parent company, were reportedly livid. One insider described an emergency meeting in Burbank: “We had people yelling, papers flying. Someone shouted, ‘We brought Jimmy back from exile and you yokels are airing Kirk reruns?’ It was chaos.”
ABC corporate insisted that Kimmel had served his time in suspension and deserved a fair return. But local affiliates held their ground, insisting that their audiences would revolt if he was aired. “In 2025, broadcasting Kimmel is like broadcasting The View — a one-way ticket to angry phone calls and boycotts,” said a Nexstar executive.
For the few cities that did air Kimmel’s return — namely New York and Los Angeles — the ratings weren’t spectacular. His monologue, which included a halfhearted joke about being “America’s most expensive time-out case,” was drowned out online by clips of affiliates airing Charlie Kirk tributes instead.
On YouTube, one upload titled “Kirk Over Kimmel: The True Choice” outperformed Kimmel’s own official episode within hours. Twitter hashtags like #KimmelWho and #WeChooseCharlie trended nationwide.
One viewer in Phoenix summed it up: “Why watch Jimmy make jokes about celebrities I don’t care about, when I can watch Kirk own the libs for eternity?”
Here’s a sample of programming that replaced Kimmel this week:
Atlanta: Charlie Kirk: The College Tour (highlight reel of Kirk yelling at students in auditoriums)
Salt Lake City: Faith, Family, Freedom (30 minutes of stock footage of bald eagles and fireworks with Kirk voiceovers)
Dallas: Jason Aldean performing Kirk’s favorite country ballads
Miami: Cuba Libre with Marco Rubio — a patriotic talk show pilot featuring Rubio reading Kirk tweets aloud
Des Moines: Reruns of Duck Dynasty with the subtitle “Charlie Kirk Approved”
Viewers reportedly welcomed the change. In Ohio, one fan tweeted: “For once I didn’t fall asleep during late-night TV. I was too busy saluting.”
The blackout instantly turned political.
President Trump praised the affiliates, calling their decision “the greatest programming move in American history, maybe the world’s history, bigger than Seinfeld reruns.” He also claimed that if he were in charge, Kimmel would be “replaced with a solid gold statue of Charlie Kirk hosting a talk show.”
Vice President JD Vance called the blackout “a moral victory” and proposed legislation requiring at least 20 minutes of Charlie Kirk airtime on all networks daily.
On the left, Democrats fumed. Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the affiliates of “corporate manipulation of free speech” while AOC tweeted: “First they silenced Kimmel, and I said nothing… because honestly, I don’t watch late-night TV.”
Kimmel himself seemed rattled. On Wednesday night, he took to Instagram with a selfie captioned: “If you can’t see me on TV, it’s because half the country canceled me harder than Starbucks did.”
He then uploaded his entire monologue to YouTube, where he tried to spin the fiasco as proof of his relevance. “When you’re too hot for TV in Des Moines, you know you’ve made it,” he joked. Unfortunately, comments like “Bro, even my grandma prefers Kirk” dominated the thread.
The irony? Charlie Kirk himself wasn’t alive to witness his stunning posthumous takeover of late-night TV. Yet his brand has never been stronger. T-shirt sales for “We Are Charlie” spiked 400% overnight, while Turning Point USA announced plans to launch its own late-night show to permanently replace Kimmel. Working title: “Turning Point Tonight: With Erika Kirk.”
Industry insiders speculate that affiliates might make the swap permanent if Kirk’s content continues to draw higher ratings than Kimmel. As one executive put it: “Jimmy’s out here doing celebrity gossip. Charlie’s a martyr. Guess who wins primetime?”
With affiliates openly revolting, the future of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is unclear. Some suggest ABC may move him to Hulu exclusively, sparing local stations the outrage. Others think he’ll be cut altogether, his timeslot forever absorbed by the Kirk phenomenon.
NBC executives, smelling blood, reportedly held emergency meetings about whether Jimmy Fallon might be next to face affiliate backlash. “If Fallon goes woke on Kirk, we’re screwed,” said one exec.
Meanwhile, Fox News teased its own late-night comedy show titled “The Last Laugh with Greg Gutfeld”, promising “jokes funnier than Jimmy’s, guaranteed.”
At the end of the day, the blackout speaks to America’s bizarre media moment: half the country now prefers watching a dead conservative activist’s speeches on repeat over a live comedian telling jokes about Hollywood.
As one station manager in Alabama summed it up: “We didn’t cancel Jimmy. We just upgraded him to Charlie. And frankly, America seems happier for it.”
Because in 2025, apparently, late-night comedy is no laughing matter — but late-night patriotism is.
NOTE: This is SATIRE, It’s Not True.
