FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has put daytime and late-night talk shows on notice, declaring that programs such as ABCs The View, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert can no longer assume they qualify for a bona fide news exemption under federal equal time rules.
According to RedState, Carrs move threatens to strip these shows of a long-standing loophole that has allowed them to host one-sided political candidate appearances without triggering the requirement to offer comparable airtime to opponents. The equal time rule, a bedrock of federal broadcast regulation, essentially mandates that if a station provides a certain amount of airtime to one political candidate, it must extend the same opportunity to that candidates rivals.
For years, heavily partisan talk and comedy programs have evaded this obligation by claiming to be entertainment rather than news, even as their hosts increasingly function as Democratic surrogates pushing heavily biased faux news angles.
The general rule is equal time applies, Carr said. Theres narrow exceptions you have to fit in. He underscored that Congress passed the equal time provision for a very specific reason, adding, They did not want the media leads in Hollywood and in New York to put their thumbs on the scale and pick their winners and losers in primaries and general elections. Thats the point.
In practice, nearly every major daytime or late-night talk show is either fronted by outspoken liberals or slants its coverage of current events in a distinctly left-wing direction. That ideological tilt has now drawn formal scrutiny, with Carr confirming that the Federal Communications Commission has opened enforcement proceedings into The View over alleged violations of political equal time rules.
The immediate flashpoint involves Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D), a candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, who was promoted by Colbert and the hosts of The View without comparable exposure for his primary opponents. One of those opponents is Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX-30), raising the obvious question of why a supposedly news-adjacent program would not extend equal time to a fellow Democrat if its concern were truly informing voters rather than boosting a preferred candidate.
Colbert has attempted to cast himself as a victim, accusing the FCC of forcing him to spike his interview with Talarico, a claim RedStates Nick Arama has already debunked as false. Carr, for his part, has confirmed that the commission has initiated enforcement proceedings against The View for its handling of the Talarico interview, vowing to hold broadcasters accountable and signaling that the era of unchecked partisan politicking on the public airwaves is drawing to a close.
In an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Carr made his intentions unmistakably clear. He declared that the days that these legacy media broadcasters get to decide what we can say, what we can think, who we can vote for are over. That statement reflects a broader conservative concern that corporate media conglomerates have long used their platforms to shape political outcomes while hiding behind entertainment labels.
Carr explained that ABC has been asserting that The View qualifies for the statutes bona fide news exemption, which would allow it to feature political candidates without triggering equal time obligations. To anyone familiar with the shows format and tone, that claim strains credulity, as the program more closely resembles a partisan coffee klatch than a straight news broadcast.
Disney has a program called The View. And theyve been asserting the position that The View is what's known as bona fide news in the statute. If you are bona fide news, you dont have to give candidates equal air time, Carr said. But Disney and The View have not established that that program is, in fact, bona fide news.
Weve started enforcement proceedings, taking a look at that. He reiterated the point for emphasis: Weve started enforcement proceedings.
Predictably, Carrs actions have been met with hysterical pushback from the left, with critics branding him a Trump lapdog and claiming he is trying to silence The View for being critical of the former president. One viral attack insisted, Hes trying to stop the cohosts from being critical of Dear Leader. Its not going to work, its only going to boost their ratings, a line that conveniently ignores the fact that the equal time rule has been on the books for decades and applies regardless of which party holds power.
Carr directly addressed the narrative that enforcing existing law amounts to authoritarianism. What we're doing now is simply applying the law on the books in an even-handed manner, he explained. And for people that benefited from a two-tier system of justice during the Biden years, it might like weaponization, but that doesn't make it so.
The chairman also pointed to a recent, high-profile example of the rule in action during the 2024 presidential race. Another ostensibly comedic program with an overt political agenda, Saturday Night Live, was forced to provide President Trump with equal airtime after the show allowed Kamala Harris to appear on its season finale. Kamala Harris just had the weakest appearance Ive ever seen on Saturday Night Live, one critic observed, highlighting both the political nature and the underwhelming impact of her cameo.
SNL had previously maintained a policy against allowing presidential candidates to appear in its sketches, but made an exception for Harris in a move that looked suspiciously like a last-minute campaign boost. The shows producers may have assumed that airing the appearance on the final episode of the season would shield them from consequences, but Carr flagged the violation, and NBC ultimately had to offer Trump two separate ad slotsone during a NASCAR broadcast and another during Sunday Night Football.
Turning back to The View, Carr has made clear that the investigation has so far failed to substantiate ABCs claim that the program qualifies as legitimate news. We encourage people to file petitions, he said. The ones we have seen have yet to establish that they qualify for the bona fide news exception.
The Hollywood Reporter, hardly a conservative outlet, spelled out the practical implications of Carrs stance, noting that his declaration that talk shows are not inherently news could mean: Say goodbye to most appearances by political candidates on daytime and late-night talk shows. For viewers tired of watching thinly veiled campaign ads masquerading as comedy or conversation, that prospect may be less a threat than a welcome correction.
If Carrs enforcement push succeeds, these programs will be forced either to comply with the law by offering genuine equal time or to retreat from the business of boosting favored candidates altogether. That shift would not only restore a measure of fairness to the public airwaves but might also make the shows exponentially more entertaining and intelligent going forward, not to mention operating in compliance with the law.
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