Key Points
- The FCC moved to narrow a long-standing waiver that treated late night and daytime talk shows as news for equal time rules.
- Chairman Brendan Carr said shows like The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live may be partisan and not automatically exempt.
- The guidance drew dissent from FCC Democrat Anna Gomez, who warned against regulatory pressure on editorial judgment.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has taken the first substantial step toward ending a waiver of its “equal time” rules for daytime and late night talk shows.
Since the mid-1990s, talk shows aired on network television has been considered “news programs” when evaluated against the agency’s long-standing equal time rules, which generally require non-news programs to set aside an equitable amount of broadcast time to all candidates or politicians.
In updated guidance issued by the FCC under its Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr, the agency says certain programs like “The View” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” appear to have partisan motivations when they conduct interviews with certain politicians.
Both programs have interviewed politicians and candidates aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties over the years, but Carr views the shows as having a partisan tilt that favors progressive candidates and causes.
“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 updated guidance said. “Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under long-standing FCC precedent.”
Programs that feel their interviews are newsworthy can request a specific waiver from the FCC. The guidance does not impact other parts of a program, including the round-table discussions on “The View” and the monologues delivered by Kimmel and other late night talk show hosts, which are not required to set aside equal time for competing views.
Politically-oriented shows that air on network TV, like “Meet the Press” on NBC and “Fox News Sunday,” would continue to be exempted from equal time rules because they are considered news programs. Those shows are typically produced by the news divisions of each network, while daytime and late night talk shows are produced by entertainment studios.
The updated guidance drew criticism from Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat at the FCC.
“Broadcasters should not feel pressured to water down, sanitize, or avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation,” Gomez said in a statement. “Broadcast stations have a constitutional right to carry newsworthy content, even when that content is critical of those in power.”
The FCC typically has a five-member panel, but has operated with two vacant seats for nearly a year. President Donald Trump is allowed to nominate one more Republican to the agency, but must choose a second person from another political party under existing federal law. So far, Trump has chosen to leave those two seats vacant, giving the Republican Party a slim majority at the agency.
The broadcast networks are not required to extend equal time opportunities in entertainment programming, those some do to avoid the appearance of conflicts — and, in the past two years, have offered equal time to avoid criticism from Trump and Carr.
In November, NBC allowed Trump to air a free commercial promoting his presidential campaign after then-Vice President Kamala Harris made an unscheduled appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” just days before the election.
During an appearance on Fox News, Carr complained that NBC did not appear willing to provide the same amount of time to Trump that the broadcaster had given to Harris. But e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request proved Carr knew NBC had already extended equitable time to Trump before his comments on Fox News, and that producers at the network were informed of the opportunity as well.
Late night programs have drawn punchlines from comedians for years, dating back to the original “Tonight Show” hosted by Jack Paar and, later, Johnny Carson. But the jokes have taken a harsher tone under the Trump administration, with Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers serving up jokes that employ Trump’s unique brand of vitriol.
Trump, who embraces compliments and avoids criticism, has targeted all three comedians over the past year, encouraging Carr to consider canceling the non-existent licenses associated with the three largest broadcast networks. Instead, Carr decided to re-open three of four news distortion complaints filed against network-owned local TV stations that were closed by his predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel. The fourth complaint he chose not to re-open involved a TV station owned by Fox.
