Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is guesting on Stephen Colbert‘s The Late Show Monday, and there isn’t anything FCC head Brendan Carr can do about it — or as a result of it.
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission released new guidance that could revoke the exemption to its “equal time” rules that daytime and late-night talk shows have enjoyed since the ’90s. Basically, the equal time policy requires TV stations to provide equivalent amounts of air time to political candidates on both sides of the same election. (The onus is not on the specific show or even the broadcast network — it is the individual stations that must balance the scales. It’s also a bit on the campaigns themselves. When free time is provided to a candidate, a record is placed in the station’s political file. Opposing candidates can then submit an equal opportunities request.) Often the discrepancy is resolved with free commercial time to the candidate who was not booked on television.
The equal time rule has not historically applied to news coverage, and in 1996, Jay Leno’s producers won a carveout for talk shows. The Tonight Show performs “bona fide” news interviews, they argued, and thus should be granted the same exemption as a newscast. The FCC agreed, and late-night shows and daytime programs were no longer beholden to the requirement. (And perhaps not coincidentally, the following year, The View was launched.)
Until now.
“Importantly, 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 FCC wrote on Wednesday, Jan. 21. “Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under long-standing FCC precedent.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to the FCC on Monday with a request for comment on this story, though we did not immediately receive a response.
Carr is targeting programming that leans left; he is President Donald Trump’s FCC chair, after all. Shapiro is a Democrat, and Colbert is among the most outspoken critics of Trump this side of, well, The View.
Shapiro, the sitting governor of Pennsylvania, officially launched his reelection campaign on Jan. 8 with events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but — and here comes the technicality — he is not yet legally a candidate for the office he currently holds. Pennsylvania law will not recognize Shapiro (or anyone else) as a gubernatorial candidate until Feb. 17, which is the first day to circulate and file nomination petitions. Then, Shapiro will need 2,000 signatures of support, a $200 check to file his candidacy, and a statement of financial interest to make the ballot from there.
Until then, Shapiro is on the trail — though not necessarily (or at least entirely) the campaign trail. The first-term governor is doing the talk show circuit pushing his memoir, Where We Keep the Light. Gov. Shapiro will appear on Tuesday’s episode of The View, and like CBS following tonight’s airing of The Late Show, your local ABC station need not set aside any airtime for Shapiro’s Republican opponent, Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
The late night TV hosts are laughing off the latest FCC crackdown. On Thursday, the day after Carr targeted the time slot, Colbert feigned shock.
“What? What? A new crackdown on late night TV? That has enormous implications for me for four more months,” Colbert said. Oh yeah, did we mention his show was canceled?
Colbert added, “So, let’s talk about these new crackdown rules that my lawyer warned me not to talk about. The FCC is announcing plans to enforce long-dormant rules on appearances by political candidates on network talk shows. Oh, no. They’ve awakened the long-dormant rules, not seen since the mind-bending horrors of the pre-Euclidian variety show ‘Cthulhu Tonight!’ This is clearly an attempt to silence me, Jimmy [Kimmel and] Seth [Meyers].”
The same night, Jimmy Kimmel told America, “I might need your help again.” Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended this past summer for a few nights after Kimmel made a monologue joke that presumed the political leanings of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Though Carr certainly inserted himself into that controversy, it was the local ABC affiliates that really got the ball rolling. Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to the airwaves after a few nights on ice, helping to cool the national temperature down some.
