FCC issued equal-airtime guidance for talk shows in January
Jimmy Kimmel said during his opening monologue Wednesday that he would interview James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Texas, but the conversation would not air on ABC.
“Tomorrow night I’ll be interviewing James Talarico under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He later said the interview “will be posted on YouTube instead.”
Kimmel attributed the decision to the Federal Communications Commission. “Now that he is president, his FCC [Federal Communications Commission] has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like,” he said.
Kimmel said he was keeping the interview off television out of consideration for local stations, particularly ABC affiliates in Texas, which he said “would have to deal with this nonsense.”
The host said his show had interviewed candidates without problems during its more than 20 years on the air, ranging “from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.” Kimmel said he interviewed Trump during his presidential campaign in 2015, and Trump returned for another interview shortly before becoming the Republican nominee in 2016.
“But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed,” Kimmel said. The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his remarks.
Talarico is running for the Texas seat against Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate and state attorney general.
The announcement came amid what The Guardian described as increased scrutiny of broadcast television by the FCC under the Trump administration. In January, the agency issued guidance warning that daytime and late-night talk shows would be expected to comply with rules requiring broadcasters to provide equal airtime to candidates running for the same office.
The Hollywood Reporter said talk shows have generally qualified for exemptions from those rules since the FCC granted an exemption to Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” in 1996.
Talarico had also been scheduled for an interview with Stephen Colbert earlier in the year. Colbert said in February that Talarico was set to appear on an episode of “The Late Show,” which ran on CBS, until the network canceled the series.
“We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said. That interview also ran on YouTube.
Kimmel’s latest announcement followed an earlier dispute involving his show and the agency. Last year, following what The Guardian described as unusual FCC pressure, ABC temporarily suspended Kimmel’s late-night show for nearly a week over a monologue about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC last month, accusing the agency of violating the First Amendment by ordering an early review of the network’s local-station broadcast licenses.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the complaint alleges.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called the lawsuit “meritless” in an August interview with the New York Times and denied that the agency was violating free-speech rights.
“Holding a broadcaster accountable to their public interest obligations and statutory obligations is not a violation of their first amendment rights,” Carr said, “and that is what the FCC is doing.”
The FCC asked the court last week to dismiss the lawsuit.