Kimmel's colleagues celebrate his return but show is blocked in a quarter of US

Late-night US chatshow hosts have celebrated the return of Jimmy Kimmel's TV show after he was suspended following pressure from the Trump administration about remarks he made on the death of Charlie Kirk.

- Rachel Leingang

"We got word that our long national late-nightmare is over," Stephen Colbert said during his own programme on Monday night. "Once more, I am the only martyr in late night, unless ... CBS, you want to announce anything?" he joked, referring to CBS's recent decision to cancel his show.

Protests and cancelled subscriptions mounted as concern over free speech rights grew. High-profile people joined in the calls to boycott Disney. The Democratic New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, had pulled out of a public meeting to be broadcast on a Disney-owned ABC channel, but reversed course after Kimmel's reinstatement.

Republicans including Ted Cruz and Rand Paul also spoke out against the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) putting pressure on Disney.

The comedian Jon Stewart credited the boycott campaign for "pretending you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of Only Murders in the Building".