Like many, I watched the whole thing with Jimmy Kimmel Live! happen mostly in disbelief. It was a terrible attack on the First Amendment, and I'm glad that it appears to be mostly unwinding itself, at least in this case.
In an article on The Verge, which details Sinclair's reinstatement of Kimmel's show starting tonight, there was this quite from a Sinclair representative:
"Our decision to preempt this program was independent of any government interaction or influence," Sinclair said. "Free speech provides broadcasters with the right to exercise judgment as to the content on their local stations. While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions about programming, it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content."
That's a tricky statement in my mind, even if it might not be legally. While I'm sure that broadcasters, and the many middlemen like Sinclair who are in the chain of broadcasting television, have the right to exercise judgment in what they air, as a viewer, I am not happy to have those middlemen exercise that right. If I want to watch Kimmel, and he's on ABC, I expect to be able to turn to my local ABC affiliate and watch it. If the local affiliate's ownership has politics that are counter to Kimmel's, I expect them to keep their politics to themselves (or to their own editorial channels) or decide to not be an ABC affiliate.