After being pulled by ABC last week, Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show was back on TV last night. With a major asterisk. The station groups Nexstar and Sinclair, which control ABC affiliates that reach about 20% of the country, decided not to take the show.

It's been widely reported that Nexstar has a merger on the table with another station group, Tegna, and the deal is awaiting approval from the Trump administration.

All of this highlights a widening gap between the big TV networks like ABC that produce programming and the local station owners licensed to broadcast that programming.

For more, “Marketplace Morning Report” David Brancaccio spoke with Craig LaMay, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: Nexstar, Tegna, more people may know Sinclair broadcasting: These station groups are big players, but not necessarily — what — household names?

Craig LaMay: Not household names, but they are very big players, and they have interests that are not the same as the networks. They also have licenses to protect where the networks actually do not, except in their owned and operated stations. And the networks see their competition in the future with big streamers. I just think the Kimmel episode has really put the spotlight on this new era of affiliate-network relationships, and we'll see where it's going to go.

Brancaccio: Divergent business models, divergent goals, but also divergent decisions, right? I mean, Disney/ABC put Kimmel back on, yet Sinclair and Nexstar did not put that first episode back on the air. I mean, it plays out with content.

LaMay: It does. And it's always been the case that affiliates have the option not to run it if they find it offensive or think it would offend their audience. But this is — it doesn't play out in public the way this particular episode has.

Brancaccio: Of course, we have a long history in this country about concern about powerful owners of a lot of media properties and their effect on the political process and the effect on the news.

LaMay: We do. But the reason we're talking about this at all is because the heavy hand of the FCC. I mean, the FCC — the Communications Act, as you know, specifically says the FCC has no power to censor. But it also gives it discretion to award licenses. So it's an indirect power over programming, and there's never been an FCC chairman to exercise that power in the way that Chairman Carr proposes to.

Brancaccio: It's an interesting point that you make, right? Those of us who grew up in broadcasting were always mindful of never saying bad words on the air, because the FCC was going to come in and get us in trouble. But, in fact, beyond the dirty words, the FCC has not had a long role in, let's say, policing content.

LaMay: No, it hasn't. You know, my former colleague, Newton Minow, famously exercised his discretion as chairman through the “raised eyebrow” approach. And while he talked about broadcasters failing to serve the public interest, he was more concerned about what they were not doing in terms of news and public affairs. And then, later, during the Reagan administration, we had an FCC approach led by the chairman there who said, “The public interest is whatever interests the public.”

But you just never seen the FCC go after news organizations the way it has now. It's using — if I'm listening to Chairman Carr’s language, he's talking about the news distortion policy that the FCC has, which is that very informal policy. No one really knows what it means — not the broadcasters, not the FCC — but it hangs like a sword of Damocles over the broadcasters.

Brancaccio: This is a principle that if it's perceived that the news is being distorted past a certain threshold, the FCC does have a role in intervening.

LaMay: Yeah, and the FCC has made news distortion complaints, of course, against Comcast and NBC, and then, of course, against CBS for its “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. But the policy, insofar as it has any clarity at all, requires real, deliberate deception by a broadcaster. It can't simply be inaccuracy or a difference of opinion.