Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is back on television this week after Disney pulled him from the air starting last Wednesday over remarks he made about the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, went on a right-wing podcast last week to criticize Kimmel’s remarks and suggested that the agency could revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a result. 

“These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” he said. 

While Carr recently said Disney made its decision without government pressure, critics found his remarks chilling. 

Even with Kimmel now back on the air, major broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair, which control more than a fifth of ABC’s local affiliates, said they will continue preempting the show. Nexstar is in the process of acquiring broadcasting rival Tegna for $6.2 billion, a deal that requires FCC approval. Some have speculated that Nexstar made that decision to ensure the deal would go through. 

Disney’s controversial move elicited backlash from consumers, who boycotted the company by cancelling Disney’s streaming services, and hundreds of celebrities, who signed a letter in support of Kimmel. Disney’s market cap plummeted by $6.4 billion between last Thursday and this Monday. 

Late-night show hosts have been particularly vulnerable this year: Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS, owned by Paramount, has been cancelled and will end next year. Colbert has been critical of Trump, so some speculated Paramount made this decision because of its plans to merge with the media production company Skydance, which would require approval from the FCC (however, Paramount’s chair of TV cited financial reasons for the cancellation). 

“This is a terrible, terrible time for free speech in the United States,” said John Fitch III, chair of the film and TV department at Cal Lutheran University. 

With late-night TV in such a precarious position in the face of all-power networks, observers might wonder whether the hosts could move on altogether and establish their own direct-to-user streaming channels.

In reality, such a transition would be highly complex and likely lead to an overhaul of the entire show format. Still, technically, it’s a possibility.

“If I were Colbert or Kimmel, I’d be exploring ways to build my own platform. The tools exist,”  said Howard Bolter, a media consultant who has expertise on launching broadcast and streaming channels. “It’s a long game, but when it works, the revenue isn’t shared with a provider like YouTube, and it can be profitable.”

The infrastructure to launch your own network operates similarly to a broadcast network, Bolter said. 

“You have to have sales, you have to have marketing, you have to have engineering,” Bolter said. 

You can sell ads, premium content, subscriptions and credits, which users can use to watch episodes, Bolter said. 

Kimmel typically gets 1.8 million nightly viewers and if he charged $1 each episode, he could theoretically rake in $1.8 million each night. “So they could make some real money,” Bolter said. But, of course, his program was airing for free on network television, which means those audience members may not be converted into paying viewers. 

When it comes to selling online ad space, shows typically need a minimum of 100,000 viewers to get advertisers to even look at them, Bolter said. 

When they do get that number of viewers, they could net between $8 and $15 per 1,000 views, Bolter said. 

Late-night shows could also theoretically transition to YouTube, where segments from these programs are already posted. But online users typically don’t watch topical shows from start to finish, Fitch said. 

“Usually we watch them as clips,” Fitch said. 

So if they did fully move to YouTube, they’d have to adapt to a dramatically different format. They could do a short-form program that’s easy to digest, Fitch said. 

A change in format would also be significantly cheaper. In their current form, late-night shows come with incredibly expensive overhead. Colbert’s show reportedly costs more thn $100 million a year to produce.

“You're talking about one or two cameras rather than four [and] no live audience, doing it in some place the size of a large bedroom rather than a basketball court,” Fitch said. 

Although Kimmel is profitable, the costs of producing a late-night show add up. 

“You've got a live audience, you have to have pages and ushers and all these folks to coordinate a live show. You're paying performers and people to come on the show. It's a really old model preceding Johnny Carson,” Fitch said. 

The network has to support union writers, union crew and union camera operators, Fitch said.

“I'm all union all the time, but they are some of the most expensive sets in the world,” Fitch said. 

Creators who have a certain amount of subscribers and a certain amount of hours watched are eligible to be part of the YouTube Partner Program, which allows you to earn money off of ads and subscription fees, said Gwendolyn Seale, an entertainment lawyer at Mike Tolleson and Associates. 

If all of your videos have millions of views, creators “can make a decent chunk of change,” Seale said. 

Some creators also have their own product placement and sponsorship deals, Seale added. 

“There are lots of different ways you can integrate in opportunities to make more revenue on the channel,” Seale said.

It’s tough to nail down the exact amount a creator can net from YouTube, since many variables will affect their earnings, including time of year. For example, advertisers are willing to spend more on ads during the holidays since people are thinking about what to buy for their family members, Seale said. 

“It could be that for 1,000 views maybe you're getting a few dollars, maybe you're getting $10 to $15,” Seale said. 

Whether they launch their own service or move to an established platform, the hosts wouldn’t have to face pressure from network affiliates. 

“The networks can do whatever they want. They're private companies. If they decide to cut something, they can cut something,” Fitch said. 

Late-night show hosts could thrive on different platforms – Conan O’Brien, after retiring from the talk show circuit, launched his own podcast. But the high production values and host and crew salaries would have to be pared back.