LOS ANGELES — Television station giants Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group said they will not run “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as the Walt Disney Co. brings the ABC comedian back to television, setting up a potentially bruising conflict between the Burbank entertainment giant and some of its affiliates.

Disney on Monday reversed its suspension of the late-night talk show after the host’s comments about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk set off a political firestorm.

But the dispute, which brought enormous pressure on Disney and put it at odds with the Trump administration, is far from resolved, and highlights the significant role of television station owners in the media business.

Nexstar and Sinclair both said they plan to keep Kimmel off the air in cities around the country as Kimmel’s show returned to production Tuesday. The decisions could test the network’s relationship with their affiliated TV stations, which have long been the foundation of the broadcasting business.

“We made a decision last week to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” Nexstar said Tuesday in a statement.

“We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve,” Nexstar said.

The Irving, Texas-based company operates 32 ABC affiliate stations, including in Salt Lake City, Nashville and Billings, Montana. Nexstar and Sinclair collectively cover nearly 25% of U.S. television homes. Losing those stations for Kimmel will diminish the ratings and reach of advertisers who buy time in the ABC television program.

Nexstar needs the approval of the Federal Communications Commission for its $6.2 billion takeover of Tegna, another large television station group. Last week, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called on ABC and other broadcasters to take action.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said during an appearance on a right-wing podcast hosted by Benny Johnson.

The chairman’s comments caused a stir, igniting fears nationwide of government attempt to stifle freedom of speech.

Nexstar was the first station group to pull Kimmel, prompting Disney to put the show on hiatus. Sinclair, which is known to be right-leaning in its politics, went a step further and demanded that Kimmel donate to Kirk’s family and his conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA.

ABC’s decision to bench Kimmel — which came as fans were lined up to see the show taped at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Hollywood — was taken “because we felt some of (Kimmel’s) comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” Disney said in a statement.

Kimmel during last week’s monologue said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” referring to Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk.

Carr called Kimmel’s comments “the sickest conduct possible.” Carr said that stations have the right to pull the show if owners believe the content conflicts with community standards.

But if the station groups keep “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off for a sustained period, they could find themselves in breach of their affiliate agreements with ABC, according to several network executives who have had dealings with stations in the past.

TV stations that carry network programming do so under contractual agreements that require them to carry every show. Stations are allowed to preempt an agreed upon number of scheduled programs over a specified period.

If the preemptions of Nexstar and Sinclair exceed what was negotiated in their affiliate agreements, ABC could find them in breach and choose to run its program lineup on other stations in the markets where Kimmel is blacked out.

Such a move would place a financial burden on Sinclair and Nexstar stations, which would need to replace the hours of programming that ABC provides along with network news coverage.

At this point, there is no evidence the network is poised to make such a drastic move. A Nexstar spokesperson declined to comment on the terms of its affiliate agreement, which are confidential. Sinclair did not respond to a request for comment and Disney declined to comment.

Through much of network TV history, stations had significant latitude when it came to what they chose not to air. In 1977, ABC introduced the provocative sitcom “Soap,” which several affiliates refused to carry during its entire first season. Many ABC affiliates were also uncomfortable with the Steven Bochco racy cop drama “NYPD Blue” and refused to air in the series during its first year.

Jean Dietze, a retired television executive who long oversaw affiliate relations at NBC, said she could not recall a station refusing to air a network program indefinitely in recent years as affiliate agreements have become more restrictive.

But Dietze said that federal broadcast regulations do give affiliated stations the right to reject programs if owners determine they are not suitable for their local communities, which was Carr’s stated argument for local channels dropping Kimmel. Those will likely be the grounds Nexstar and Sinclair use to justify their decisions.

Many of Nexstar’s ABC affiliates are in heavy Trump-supporting areas such as Panama City, Florida, Dothan, Alabama, and Salt Lake City, where viewers may feel particularly raw over Kirk’s death.

Nexstar and Sinclair may not take much of a financial hit from keeping Kimmel off the air. By airing local news in the hour, the stations will get to sell all of the commercial time and will probably recoup their costs.

But if Disney chooses to move its Nexstar and Sinclair affiliate agreements to other stations, the cost of running replacement programming in the lost hours would cut into their profit margins. While ratings for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and ABC’s prime-time shows have declined, the network carries high-rated college football games through January, an NFL playoff game, the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs and the NBA Finals in the spring.

Losing that programming would be a blow.

Nexstar has its eyes on a bigger prize in its proposed Tegna acquisition. The firm needs Carr to remove the current cap on TV station ownership, which limits companies to reaching 39% of U.S. households, in order to complete its blockbuster deal. Tegna owns stations in 51 markets.

The combination would create a TV station behemoth covering about 80% of U.S. television households.

Nexstar has more than 200 stations in 116 markets, although some are owned through partnerships. The company also owns NewsNation, the cable news channel launched in 2020, and a majority stake in the CW Network.

Sinclair also wants the flexibility to buy and sell its stations, and their destiny on that front lies with Carr’s FCC. (Sinclair owns the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C.)

For now, any concerns that ABC had over its affiliated TV station partners took a back seat to the withering pressure on multiple fronts to return Kimmel to his hosting duties.

More than 400 celebrities, including such Disney talent as Selena Gomez, Martin Short, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kerry Washington and Lin-Manuel Miranda, signed an open letter organized by the American Civil Liberties Union. It decried attempts at government censorship, which “strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country.”

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