Overview
- Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers barred him from airing and even mentioning his taped interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, so the show posted it on YouTube instead.
- CBS countered that it did not prohibit the broadcast and only advised that airing it could trigger equal-time obligations for rivals such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a claim Colbert disputed on Tuesday’s show.
- The dust-up stems from FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s January notice signaling that late-night and daytime talk-show interviews may not qualify for the longstanding “bona fide news” exemption.
- FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized CBS’s move as corporate capitulation and stressed that the Commission has not changed the equal-time framework.
- The FCC has opened an inquiry into ABC’s The View after a Talarico appearance, and networks are steering contested candidate segments to online platforms that are not subject to the rule.