FCC to enforce equal‑time rules for candidates on late‑night and daytime talk shows

The Federal Communications Commission said it will enforce long‑dormant rules requiring broadcasters to give rival political candidates equal opportunities to appear on entertainment‑oriented talk shows, a move that the guidance clearly targeted at late‑night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers and that could also cover daytime programs such as "The View." The new guidance says entertainment‑oriented talk shows carried on local television stations must offer candidates vying for the same office equal airtime, while "bona fide" news programming such as evening newscasts remains exempt.

The action aligns with F.C.C. Chairman Brendan Carr’s yearlong effort to use an old "public interest" standard to challenge perceived bias by major networks; the F.C.C.’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, called the guidance "an escalation in this F.C.C.'s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech." The industry had long treated candidate interviews on entertainment talk shows as exempt, citing a 2006 F.C.C.

determination that interviews on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" counted as bona fide news. In its new guidance the commission warned that talk shows were not broadly exempt. Mr. Carr wrote on X, "For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late night & daytime talk shows qualify as 'bona fide news' programs — even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes." The F.C.C.

Key Topics

Politics, Federal Communications Commission, Equal-time Rules, Public Interest Standard, Brendan Carr, Jimmy Kimmel