Hollywood teams condemn Kimmel Shutdown as a “consolidation fueled by the greed of business power”

The Hollywood Teamsters Union has now condemned the indefinite suspension of ABC of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, Recognizing it as “consolidation fueled by the greed of the power of companies” which sells “families of workers and our American freedoms”.

The union also accused the FCC of using its power to approve mergers to “actively encourage companies to further suppress freedom of expression”, linking this directly to a merger pursued by one of the largest local television broadcasters in the country.

“We are witnessing a dangerous trend of societies that try to acid the mergers through the back door. This reckless consolidation and fueled by the greed of corporate power is a direct threat to good union jobs and the livelihoods of our members.

The president of the FCC, Brendan Carr, threatened ABC and Disney during the appearance of the podcast on Wednesday, demanding that Kimmel be suspended or dismissed for a comment he made on the killer of Charlie Kirk. “We can do it the simplest or hard way,” said Carr literally.

A few hours later, Nexstar, who has more than 200 stations detained or partners in 116 US markets, said that he would preempt the broadcast of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Indefinitely, calling Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive to a critical moment in our national political discourse”. Sinclair made a similar announcement shortly after.

As the teamsters pointed out in its declaration, Nexstar requests the approval of the FCC for a merger of $ 6.2 billion with the group of the competing station competing Tegna. While Nexstar denied that the merger played a factor in its decision to suspend Kimmel, which ABC then followed with a national suspension of its program, Teamsters sees it differently.

“Once finished, this merger agreement could lead to this company holding 80% of American television households and far exceeds the 39% long -standing limit of the ownership of the stations that we have seen in the past three decades,” said the union.

“Carr is not a politician – he is a regulator. The personal political opinions of any regulator should not lead to job loss for ordinary Americans and workers. We should not look at our government actively encourage companies to suppress even stronger in freedom of expression. It is inappropriate and deadly for our democracy and our economy, ”continued the declaration.

After Trump’s electoral victory last year, his return to the White House was scheduled to accelerate the expected consolidation of Hollywood media companies.

But Carr leadership at the FCC has led to a touch of this trend, as the regulator was accused of having used fusion approvals to push companies to comply with Trump’s requests on a wide range of questions, the elimination of Dei initiatives in Paramount by granting a settlement of a legal action filed by the President against CBS New Skydance.

The Hollywood Teamsters declaration condemning Kimmel’s suspension and the Nexstar-Tegna merger offer also occur a week after the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount, under the new CEO David Ellison, made an offer to acquire all of his colleague studio inherited Warner Bros. Discovery.

“If it is not controlled, the consolidation that we see in companies like Nexstar will continue to harm the film and televised industry, which has led to more layoffs, a reduction in employment security, less content and a global need for less qualified Hollywood workers,” said the teams.

Thursday, demonstrations were staged outside the Disney backlot in Burbank as well as in front of the Hollywood Masonic temple, where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been broadcast since its first in 2003. The members of several Hollywood unions, including the Writers Guild of America and Sag-Aftra, were seen during the demonstrations.

What triggered this was that Monday during his monologue, Kimmel said: “We hit new stockings during the weekend with the Gang Maga trying desperately to characterize this child who murdered Charlie Kirk as something other than one of them and do everything they can to score political points.”

Kimmel’s hypothesis that Robinson had right -wing political opinions was based on all public evidence on Monday. But Tuesday, more details came out that clearly established that Robinson did not hold right -wing policy, can be at least somewhat left and was apparently motivated by personal concerns. Many questions remain unanswered, however.

This context was widely ignored by conservative criticism, or the entities that teamsters accuse of asking for the favor of the Trump administration.