Depends want you mean by 'in fear of.' Every television station, every network had a legal team evaluating programming content to make sure it didn't violate the code for what is decent, what language and content is allowed, and what isn't. They still do though the rules are far more lax than they were in the previous century.
I watched an interview with Darren McGavin sometime before he passed probably 20+++ years ago. The fake cursing when he was dealing with the furnace in "A Christmas Story" was not written out in the script and he improvised. When the movie was to be first shown on television, he said the network watchdogs listened to that over and over to be sure there were no actual disallowed curse words in it.
You'll have to be specific re what President Trump's 'heavy handed stunt' actually was to convince me it was that. So far I've only seen how the left has dishonestly twisted it into something it never was and was never intended to be.
I think the OP is probably closer to the truth than most we've seen put out there so far, i.e. ABC welcomed a reason to put Kimmel out to pasture.
