U.S. TV Station Ownership Map

On September 15, 2025, Jimmy Kimmel made headlines for comments he made in his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and on September 17, FCC chairman Brendan Carr suggested Kimmel should be suspended for his remarks. Hours later, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group announced they would preempt the show on their ABC-affiliate stations, and shortly thereafter, ABC announced it would suspend the show indefinitely. On September 22, ABC's parent company, Disney, announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would return to air on the 23rd, but Sinclair and Nexstar continued to preempt the show. Finally, on September 26, both ownership groups announced they would resume airing the show, ending the blackout.

Although Sinclair and Nexstar have publicly stated their decisions were independent of any government influence, there is widespread belief that the owners acted in response to Carr's comments. In August, Nexstar agreed to acquire Tegna Inc.—another major broadcast media company—in a $6.2 billion deal that will require FCC approval. Sinclair is also reportedly exploring merger opportunities.

I created the following tool to help visualize the market reach of these companies through their ownership of major U.S. television networks' local affiliates. The data are sourced from Wikipedia articles such as this one, and the transmitter station coordinates and ranges were added using LLMs whose knowledge base includes publicly available FCC information.