That was quick

 From the Hollywood Reporter:

There Goes the Jimmy Kimmel Boycott: Nexstar, Sinclair Fold as Late Night Show Returns

The local TV giants backed away from opting to preempt the show on their ABC stations, which impacted nearly one quarter of the country. 

That capitulation (if anything a bigger and more complete surrender than Disney's) came a bit quicker than I anticipated, though the outcome was not much of a surprise. Here's our read on the situation from last Wednesday:

 In particular, Nexstar and Sinclair may well be looking at a rough stretch for one of their biggest sources of advertising, local news. By not only becoming the story but by reinforcing it every weeknight with the preemption, ratings are likely to suffer and advertisers are likely to be chased away. Disney has huge incentives not to back down again, while these two companies are looking at a fight with enormous downsides. It’s likely this will go on for a while. Sinclair, in particular, committed itself by making outrageous demands when it thought it had the upper hand. 

 Sinclair’s biggest advantage has always been the fact that most people neither know nor care who owns their local television station. They could put a heavy thumb on the news without consequence. They may be about to find out that some businesses are better off without brand recognition.

 While all of the analysis of the Sinclair/Nexstar situation relied heavily on speculation (ours included), and like us, many other commentators—such as Josh Marshall—talked about the damage that public scrutiny could do to these companies, particularly Sinclair, as far as I can tell, ours was the only one that also discussed the impact on local news revenues. Given how quickly the two broadcasters caved and how little effort they made at face-saving—especially Sinclair, after having demanded apologies and financial contributions from Kimmel only to turn around and get nothing—the local news aspect would seem to be a large and obvious part of the story, which begs the question: why was it left out of seemingly every report on the story?

Part of the problem is that coverage of the television industry in the mainstream press has become hopelessly narrative-locked—so driven by PR flacks and invested in discredited assumptions that it only occasionally and tangentially relates to reality.

According to the standard narrative, Sinclair and Nexstar shouldn’t still exist, let alone become powerful, profitable, multi-billion-dollar companies. One of the reasons they are still around is their nightly local news broadcasts. 

Nightly local news is where these companies make much—perhaps most—of their profits, and these programs are closely associated with the shows they lead into, particularly the 11:00 (10:00 Central) broadcasts. Rather than miss any of the opening monologues, the Colbert fan will tend to opt for the CBS local news, the Kimmel fan will tend to go with ABC, and so forth. The shows are also linked in viewers’ minds in other ways, and that association carries over to the advertisers who support those news broadcasts. The result is a nightmare scenario for the station owners: simultaneously chasing away the viewers and pissing off the advertisers for the shows that kept you in the black. 

If this were just a question of bad PR and brand damage, I suspect both companies would have toughed it out for at least a few more days in an effort to placate Trump and put a slightly better spin on a humiliating defeat. Giving in before the end of the week suggests they had some additional incentive, such as multiple stations suddenly going into the red.