Five months after ABC briefly suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! amid political pressure and affiliate preemptions, the Federal Communications Commission has released a voluminous file of viewer complaints.
The nearly 1,600 submissions, released in response to multiple FOIA requests—including one from LateNighter—offer a unique window into how viewers reacted.
Notably, most of the complaints were not directed at Jimmy Kimmel—but rather the FCC’s own chair, Brendan Carr.
A LateNighter review of all 1,596 complaints shows that 62 percent primarily criticized the FCC and/or Carr, while fewer than 5 percent were primarily critical of Kimmel. Another 7 percent directed criticism at both Kimmel and the commission. The remaining 26 percent were content-thin notes that did not clearly assign blame.
In the days immediately following Kimmel’s September 15 monologue, fewer than 30 viewers contacted the FCC to complain about his comment that the “MAGA gang” was trying to characterize Charlie Kirk’s murderer “as anything other than one of them,” accusing conservatives of trying to score political points off Kirk’s death.
One Georgia viewer called Kimmel’s remarks “reckless and misleading.” A Florida complainant said the show crossed “the line from satire into malicious disinformation.”
After Carr publicly pressured ABC affiliates to preempt Kimmel and ABC “indefinitely” pulled the show off the air on September 17, the tenor of the complaints changed. The bulk of subsequent filings targeted Carr and/or the commission itself.
A Tennessee viewer wrote that pulling the show appeared to be “an act of censorship that undermines the First Amendment,” while another described Carr’s pressure campaign against Kimmel as “much more chilling than the comments of any late-night comedian.”
A smaller but distinct subset criticized both sides—objecting to Kimmel’s remarks while also questioning whether the FCC should involve itself in political satire at all.
The file underscores how unusual this complaint surge was. FCC complaint spikes typically follow allegations of indecency, profanity, or technical violations. In this case, most viewers were reacting to the regulator, not the broadcast.
The sheer number of complaints is also extraordinary. (For reference: a year earlier, the FCC received just 5 complaints related to Jimmy Kimmel over a three-month period starting September 1, 2024.)
The complete collection of September 2025 FCC complaints is embedded below.
