How the Kimmel Controversy Echoes Disney’s Dirty China Deal

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel’s “indefinite” suspension from ABC ended with his emotional return to Jimmy Kimmel Live! According to Puck’s entertainment correspondent Kim Masters, the studio, owned by the Disney Corporation, was moved to abruptly reverse its Kimmel decision—which came in response to right-wing protests over comments about the Trump administration’s political response to the killing of Charlie Kirk—in part as a result of scathing social media comments from former Disney chair and CEO Michael Eisner. Though Eisner’s post didn’t name any names, it was clearly aimed squarely at his successor in the Happiest Place on Earth, Robert Iger.

“Where has all the leadership gone?” Eisner asked on X.com. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment? The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.”

Eisner was referring to the interview that Brendan Carr, Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave to a right-wing podcaster last week, in which he said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” That same day, Sinclair Media and Nexstar, two companies that own dozens of ABC affiliates in major media markets, announced that they would no longer carry Kimmel’s show. Disney then announced Kimmel’s suspension.

According to Masters, the long history between Eisner and Iger and the ugly battle that ushered Eisner out of and Iger into his job played an emotional role in Iger’s decision to reverse the suspension. Conscience? Pride? Who knows? The full story behind Kimmel’s restoration will come out soon enough, and bottom-line considerations will no doubt loom large. Iger and his team may have simply toted up the value of Sinclair and Nexstar ABC affiliate stations in a fading “linear broadcasting” network that Disney keeps hemming and hawing about selling anyway against the long-term costs to Disney of losing millions of subscribers for its Disney+ and Hulu streaming platforms over Kimmel’s suspension.

Another cost-benefit calculation that may have occurred to the Disney brass is that it’s not worth it to appease a bully. After all, it paid Trump $15 million dollars in a nuisance lawsuit against ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and then still faced federal threats to the company’s broadcasting license over its late-night comedian’s jokes. The company may have come to the belated conclusion that simply doing the right thing and keeping Kimmel on the air would prove cheaper than facing a never-ending regress of Trump administration shakedowns.

Whatever the ultimate reason for the call, Kimmel’s return is welcome news, because when a company with the cultural footprint the size of Disney’s makes a bad move, the ugly results stay with us for decades. Say, for instance, that Disney had folded to the demands of an autocratic regime by silencing critics and artists opposing it. That, as it happens, is Michael Eisner’s own legacy at Disney, after he caved in to China’s market-bullying demands. And the artist Eisner silenced was the acclaimed film director Martin Scorsese.

In 1996, while Eisner held a top spot at Disney, the studio greenlighted a $28 million budget for Scorsese to film Melissa Mathison’s screenplay Kundun, a historical epic about the life of the 14th Dalai Lama and the People’s Republic of China’s invasion of Tibet. Throughout the 1990s, the crusade of Tibetan liberation, fueled in part by a spiritual fascination with Buddhism, became a cause célèbre in the entertainment industry.

Richard Gere used his moment presenting an Art Direction Oscar at the 1993 Academy Awards to make a personal plea to the chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, Deng Xiaoping, to withdraw Chinese troops from Tibet. The late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys helped organize the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, the first of which took place at the Polo Grounds of San Francico’s Golden Gate Park before an audience of 100,000 people. By 1996, two major studios greenlighted movies about Tibet, Sony’s Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and Disney’s Kundun. ABC even had a hit sitcom called Dharma and Greg.

Two days into Scorsese’s location shoot for Kundun, with Morocco standing in for Tibet, Disney executive Peter Murphy got a call from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC. As Erich Schwartzel reports in his book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, the embassy official told Murphy, “You started, in the last 48 hours, shooting a film in Morocco about the Dalai Lama called Kundun.”

They had? Murphy did not get the call because he was a movie executive. He was Disney’s chief executive for strategic planning. He barely knew Kundun existed—but he knew why an unhappy China mattered a great deal. Years before, he had been to China to discuss plans to open a Shanghai Disneyland, a project the Chinese had been pushing for since 1990. Yes, China still looked like a Cold War tyrant to supporters of Tibet and the protesters of Tiananmen Square, but it had opened up its large, lucrative markets to Disney’s film and television divisions—a potent revenue stream that would only increase over time.