Chairman Brendan Carr and the FCC are gearing up for the next front in their ongoing war with the ultimate enemies of American freedom (i.e., American talk show hosts). Having apparently recovered from last year’s spat with Jimmy Kimmel—which saw him murmur to network affiliates that it sure would be a shame if something happened to their FCC licenses if they didn’t boycott Kimmel after he made comments about Charlie Kirk’s death, leading to the host’s brief suspension from ABC airwaves—Carr has now begun making noises about attacking late-night and daytime talk from a different angle.
The FCC’s latest cudgel in its bloody and grueling campaign against the art of smiling and delivering a tight three-minute anecdote to camera is the famed equal-time rule, enshrined in the Communications Act of 1934, which states that broadcast stations have to give equal parts of their time to competing political candidates. The rule makes exceptions for broadcasts that count as news, which has been the slightly uncomfortable position that talk shows have limboed by with since the 1980s, when Donahue successfully argued that any interviews with political figures it hosted fit the bill. Several decades’ worth of subsequent FCCs have okayed shows like The View and The Tonight Show on an ostensibly case-by-case basis—notably signing off on a 2006 appearance by then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Jay Leno Tonight Show—a position that that has normalized candidates and other political figures as regular guests on the talk show circuit.
But possibly not for much longer, as the FCC’s media bureau put out a statement today saying that “The FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption.” The language mirrors comments Carr made last year, specifically calling The View out by name as a show he felt was violating the equal time provisions. The FCC statement, which is presented as “guidance on political equal opportunities requirements,” doesn’t outline any next steps for the commission, but does ominously warn that it’s important that “both broadcasters and legally qualified candidates understand the FCC’s equal opportunities regulations and how they can result in broadcasters offering opposing legal qualified candidates comparable time and placement.” Meanwhile, Biden-appointed FCC commissioner Anna M. Gomez—whose role as the only Democrat-placed commissioner on the organization’s current three-person board means her day job is now basically just to be the very vocal minority vote on stuff like this—gave a statement of her own today in which she called the move “an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
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