(Photo by Ricardo Moreira/Getty Images for Disney)

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Sometimes, belting out the greatest hits isn’t necessarily the best strategy for a veteran performer who’s long been in the spotlight and now is facing tired audiences and increasing critical backlash over other parts of the act. Take the president’s latest reading of his familiar script about ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

Both Donald Trump and his wife reacted to a Kimmel joke about Melania Trump’s “expectant widow” face during Kimmel’s fake version of the White House Correspondents Dinner, broadcasted two days before the real correspondents dinner was disrupted by an apparent assassination attempt.

After the assassination attempt, the Trumps called for Disney-owned ABC to fire Kimmel.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a notably attentive follower of the president’s feuds and discontents, quickly initiated the lengthy process of an expedited review of the broadcast licenses for eight local stations that Disney and ABC own in some of the country’s largest markets. That despite the fact that none of the licenses is set to expire for at least three more years.

Carr asserted the review was necessary because of Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, a cudgel the administration has used on other institutions such as colleges that receive federal funding.

The script is a familiar one for anyone tracking Trump’s long-running public feud with Kimmel, including last summer’s rage over a joke Kimmel made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Two large station groups boycotted his show, and Kimmel was off the air for a week.

Now we’re back at it again, with more FCC saber rattling. Notable, however, is that this script, which was panned last time by even some Trump supporters, is getting even more negative reviews, from notables such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the conservative Texas Republican.

“It’s not government’s job to censor speech, and I do not believe the FCC should operate as the speech police,” said Cruz, who frequently but not always supports Trump positions.

What’s different this time, though, is Josh D’Amaro, who took over for Bob Iger as Disney CEO barely a month ago. Welcome to the big leagues, new guy. Here’s what comes with the stock options and the nice office in Burbank.

That said, plenty of hot takes said D’Amaro was facing his first challenge as Top of the Mouse House. Not really. Days after he arrived, D’Amaro announced 1,000 layoffs, largely targeting fading areas of the sprawling Disney operations, such as home entertainment. That’s not nothing, as he reshapes Disney for its digital future.

D’Amaro is also dealing with OpenAI’s sudden plug-pulling on its Sora social-video app and a related $1 billion Disney deal, and with underperforming engagement at Fortnite, where Disney has a themed island. Disney also has invested $1.5 billion in Fortnite owner Epic Games, though that’s as much for its Unreal Engine virtual production tools.

To his credit, D’Amaro has kept his cool, neither suspending Kimmel’s regular late-night gig, nor jumping into a no-win war of words. Mostly (at least publicly), Disney has issued a bland corporate statement of intent to follow the actual law and defend itself accordingly.

“Our record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment,” Disney said. The company will defend itself through "the appropriate legal channels,” a process, it’s worth noting, that will surely far outlast the term of either Carr or Trump.

It’s also worth noting that the big station groups that pulled Kimmel off the air last summer have been largely quiet this time around. It’s possible they made far less money with fill-in programming for a week last summer, which may have tempered their political inclinations for a repeat of their part in this drama.

Regardless, it’s absolutely true that Kimmel returned to air to some of his highest ratings in years. That almost certainly was also good news for the station groups.

The real question for Disney is how much longer does it need to put up with all this hooey? Disney’s broadcast and cable holdings have seen a steady decline in audience sizes, like just about every other corner of traditional “TV.”

Even the broadcast stations don’t reach most of their audience with over-the-air antennas these days. Instead, most people get their local broadcast affiliate served to them by way of broadband, fixed wireless, satellite TV or similar options. One recent estimate put the broadcast-only U.S. audience at just 15 million of roughly 110 million households.

Last summer, senior equity analyst Laura Martin of Needham & Co. had a modest proposition for Disney: ditch broadcast, and let go of those eight broadcast licenses. Keep creating all that programming (Disney’s many holdings create more content than anyone in the business), but transmit it over non-broadcast channels, such as on ABC.com, Disney+, and ESPN the app.

Such a radical shift, to the distribution outlets that are actually growing, would expand valuation multiples by 40 to 60 basis points per year for a decade, Martin estimated. For shareholders, that translates to 10% more value for their shares (which, it should be said, haven’t done squat the past two years since Nelson Peltz lost his proxy campaign. Shares peaked soon after, at about $120, and Peltz made a fortune selling his stake. Shares today hit $104.)

Getting rid of broadcast now would indeed be an extreme response. But will it be an extreme idea in a few years? What will broadcast even look like in five years? When should Disney let go of its broadcast operations? Given current trends, it’ll be mostly live sports, plus local news and weather.

And the audience likely still on broadcast five years from now is unlikely to be young enough to appeal to many advertisers, especially those trying to reach the younger fans of Disney’s children’s shows, animation and superhero yarns.

It’s the kind of radical move that would be unimaginable for Iger, D’Amaro’s predecessor and a man who got his start working for a local broadcast station as a weatherman. D’Amaro comes with no such warm nostalgia, and might be ready to do whatever makes sense for the future in the fast-evolving TV ecosystem.

The shift has already begun with the conservative-leaning Nexstar, the nation’s largest broadcast station group and one of the boycotters last summer. Carr has already approved a waiver of laws capping station-group ownership, allowing Nexstar to more than double its national reach with the purchase of Tegna, the No. 4 chain.

That waiver is on hold after lawsuits from DirecTV and the attorneys general of eight blue-leaning states. But Nexstar already has shifted the national news feeds on its dozens of stations to NewsNation, Nexstar’s own right-of-center news organization, and away from the broadcast networks’ own feeds. Call it a trial separation in a possible future divorce.

The big question, however, in any dramatic shift in Disney broadcast centers on three letters: NFL. The sports league that generates the most popular programming on television (its three-day draft event this month drew more than 800,000 attendees and better TV ratings than many actual NBA playoff games) has already reopened its 11-year contracts with the broadcast networks and other partners, It’s looking to position itself for still more money than the $111 billion it’s already receiving.

The NFL is also being threatened by Carr, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, and others who have insinuated that the league’s 65-year-old antitrust exemption might be in danger if games aren’t on local broadcast. Without the games, and the ad revenue and tune-in they generate, it’s hard to imagine how many stations stay afloat, no matter what happens with station-group consolidation.

As with D’Amaro’s low-key response to the Trumps and Carr, the league hasn’t gotten into a war of words. But it has sent a couple of cannon balls across the prow of the conservatives.

The league released data showing that pro football games generate far more value for their distribution partners than just about any other type of entertainment, And ending the antitrust exemption would make finding games on TV even more complicated, and likely streaming-bound to deep-pocketed tech firms such as Amazon.

More notably, the NFL also cut a deal with Alphabet to put five games on YouTube that formerly were on the NFL.com premium cable service, now available for free to anyone with an Internet connection. Want to increase easy and free public access to NFL games? Well, that’ll do it better than stashing games on local broadcasters.

The league will decide in coming months how much it wants to rely on broadcast to reach its massive audience, and when it should shift elsewhere. In this, the league and the new head of one of its biggest partners will decide how they want to react to an old, tired script that no longer seems to be working for most audiences.