On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains the looming merger allegedly influencing decisions to broadcast Jimmy Kimmel
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From the September 23, 2025, edition of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): Angelo, as a sort of veteran of this space for a very long time, watching how media companies make decisions like this and large corporations. What is your read on what happened over the last three or four days?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I think that it's important to consider, you know, when they're making these calculus is both when they take the initial action and then what happens afterwards. They're not just basing it on the moment. They're making a projection about the future as well. Where does it go? And one of the underlying assumption is, is the advocacy against us going to fizzle out? Is this a one and done? Did we make the right choice by capitulating to the government or are we at the beginning of something that's going to continue to get worse for us? And in this case, Disney became a proxy fight for all of the authoritarian consolidation impulses that we're seeing play out all across the board.
And there was this momentum building. So, they made a calculus about the future, that this was something that was going to crescendo and that at some point it would become incredibly unsustainable for them from a pure financial perspective. And that's it. They're making a bet. And in this case, the people that were acting collectively were able to demonstrate that it was a bad bet to capitulate so easily to the government, especially when in this case, they didn't really have much leverage over Disney. They just folded without even needing to fight.
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HAYES: Now, I want to talk to you, Angelo, about Sinclair because they have been sort of a long time player in this space. They are notoriously right-wing. Those are just the politics that the owners have. There's no question that -- it's like saying the Nation is a left, liberal publication like Sinclair is that. Where do you see this going for Sinclair and Nexstar?
CARUSONE: So this is the part that's really interesting and why it's going to be a long fight. And this is the other part of the story because both Sinclair and Nexstar want to purchase a third company called Tegna, which has about 64 local stations. And right now, Nexstar won the bid. Sinclair came in and said, "We will give you even more money," but ultimately the bid is going to be dependent on the FCC approving the sale. And I think what you're seeing sort of play out here, underneath all of it, is a hope on the part of Sinclair that maybe the FCC, if they can curry more favor with the FCC and the Trump administration, that they won't give the deal to Nexstar or they'll put some speed bumps up or make it a little bit more friction-fueled so that Tegna's people say, "You know what, it's better just to go with Sinclair."
And you could see that play out in the statements, right, because Nexstar says, "We're not going to broadcast it, we don't think it's in the public interest." Sinclair comes out and says, "We're not going to broadcast it until Jimmy Kimmel apologizes and write checks right to Turning Point USA and to the family." Right? So they're each trying to sort of one up each other a little bit here. So, I don't think this is anywhere over, and I don't think that's going to go away for a while, but ultimately that just sort of hurts them. I mean, they still have to pay the affiliate fees, and then they're going to have to deal with all the consequences from their own people of not broadcasting something everybody wants.