FCC ordering a review of ABC’s licenses right after a Kimmel joke about Trump and Melania feels less like regulation and more like someone slamming the piano lid shut mid-performance.
License reviews are such a sneaky lever because you don’t have to “punish the joke” directly to punish the people around it. Even if nothing gets yanked, you’ve just forced ABC + a bunch of local affiliates into paying the lawyer/time tax and living in uncertainty for months, which is plenty to make producers start sanding the edges off anything spicy.
I’m not sure how often these reviews actually end in non-renewal vs just quietly expiring into nothing, but the incentive is obvious: make the process the penalty, then act shocked when everyone self-censors. I’d drop the code bit though—this is one of those situations where the metaphor makes it feel smaller than it is, and it gives the “lol nerds” crowd an easy way to dismiss the point.
Proper mess
