Disney announced on Monday that it screwed up when it suspended late-night ABC host Jimmy Kimmel "indefinitely."
It isn't a shocking announcement, Dylan Byers from Puck News told MSNBC after the news was announced. "They were telegraphing this," he said.
Deadline executive editor Dominic Patten said that Disney was already at work 24 hours after the announcement, trying to figure out how to walk back their actions.
The company has lost 2.31% in market value over the past five days, at a time when the Dow Jones is up at least 1%, wrote data analyst G. Elliott Morris.
John Oliver spoke out about the matter on his Sunday show, while issuing the warning, “Giving the bully your lunch money doesn’t make him go away, he just comes back hungrier each time.”
"The strangeness of the current moment lies in how the administration is consolidating authoritarian power while also being extremely weak," noted legal analyst Quinta Jurecic. "This was a huge push, and they failed. Elite decadence (Disney) vs. popular anti-authoritarian vitality (Disney adults).
"'The protests and boycotts worked! HELL YEAH!" exclaimed commentator and influencer Ed Krassenstein.
Nearly 400 artists signed onto a letter against the network and singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan canceled her performance at the opening of a Disney documentary.
"But let’s not rewrite history; Disney only brought him back because the public backlash hit their wallets. Their stock tanked. Their execs got exposed. This wasn’t justice. It was damage control. Keep the pressure on," podcaster Brian Allen wrote on X.
Lawyer Benjamin Kabak gave his own interpretation of the Disney statement, “Please stop canceling your subscriptions. We’re bleeding far more revenue than we anticipated."