US TV host Stephen Colbert appears before a House panel on Capitol Hill in 2010. Photo / Nikki Kahn, The Washington Post
CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert has rebuked his own network claiming that lawyers for parent company Paramount Skydance prohibited him from airing an interview with Texas state Representative James Talarico (Democrat), a United States Senate candidate, over concerns it would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time rule.
“You know who is not one of my guests tonight?” Colbert asked his audience.
“That’s Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but 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.”
In response, the studio audience booed.
“Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on,” Colbert continued.
“And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
Colbert launched into a segment about the FCC’s equal time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to political candidates.
News and talk show interviews have traditionally been exempt from the mandate.
But in January, the FCC, issued a public notice saying that daytime and night-time talk shows would have to apply for exemptions to the equal time rule for each of their programmes.
“Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show programme on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” the FCC’s notice read.
At the time, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the notice “misleading” and said nothing has changed about the FCC’s requirements.
In a statement today, Gomez wrote that CBS’ decision is an example of “corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech” and said that the FCC has “no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes”.
“CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing,” she said.
In a statement, CBS defended itself and pushed back against Colbert’s account.
“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” a spokesperson for the network said in a statement.
“The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.
“THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
Colbert is already on his way out of CBS, set to depart the network in May when his show goes off the air.
CBS announced last year that it is cancelling The Late Show, the long-running talk show once hosted by David Letterman, which it claimed is “purely a financial decision”.
Led by chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC in US President Donald Trump’s second term has remade itself as a speech enforcer tackling perceived liberal bias in the media industry.
Carr’s speech agenda has been marked by investigations of media companies and threats to take action against broadcasters that do not follow rarely enforced FCC rules.
He has frequently invoked a little-used “news distortion” policy as justification, a practice condemned by a bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners in a November letter.
Following on-air comments in September by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, Carr suggested on a podcast that the agency could take action against the network and its parent company Disney, which owns broadcast licences across the country.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson about Kimmel.
“These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Carr drew bipartisan criticism for his role in the episode, with Senator Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas) likening him to a cinema mafioso. ABC suspended Kimmel for several days in September.
Last summer the FCC approved an US$8 billion ($13b) deal for David Ellison’s Skydance to buy CBS parent company Paramount after a series of concessions.
Skydance pledged to conduct a review of CBS’ programming and agreed to refrain from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. It also appointed an ombudsman with Republican Party ties to handle claims of bias.
In July, CBS also settled a lawsuit from Trump, who claimed that a 60 Minutes interview with political rival Kamala Harris was “deceitful” in its editing. Colbert claimed the US$16 million settlement was a “big, fat bribe”. The network cancelled The Late Show three days later.
Colbert’s criticism also comes amid another corporate pursuit for Paramount Skydance.
The company is trying to persuade Warner Bros. Discovery to accept its hostile bid to buy the company rather than sell to Netflix.
It’s unclear whether the FCC would have a role in such a deal, even if Paramount is involved, because no broadcast spectrum licences would be changing hands. Still, any deal of this size would need government approval, probably from Trump’s Justice Department, where anti-trust chief Gail Slater just resigned.
In December, Trump said he would be “involved” in vetting the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal, which has massive implications for Hollywood, movie theatres and streaming. More recently, Trump backtracked, saying he is “not involved” in the deal.
Talarico, 36, has been a member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2018 and more recently has been a rising star in the Democratic Party. He is running for a US Senate seat in Texas, which is holding its primary contests on March 3.
Colbert’s interview with Talarico was made available on YouTube.
“This is the party that ran against cancel culture,” Talarico told Colbert.
“Now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture - the kind that comes from the top.”
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