CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert rebuked his own network Monday night, claiming that lawyers for parent company Paramount Skydance prohibited him from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), a U.S. 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.” A representative for Paramount Skydance did not respond to a request for comment.
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 nighttime talk shows would have to apply for a exemptions to the equal time rule for each of their programs.
“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’s notice read.
At the time, Anna M. Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the notice “misleading” and said nothing has changed about the FCC’s requirements. “Broadcast stations have a constitutional right to carry newsworthy content, even when that content is critical of those in power,” she wrote on X. “That does not change today, it will not change tomorrow and it will not change simply because of this Administration’s desire to silence its critics.”
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 over the summer that it is canceling “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 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 licenses 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 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) likening him to a cinema mafioso. ABC suspended Kimmel for several days in September.
Last summer the FCC approved an $8 billion 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’s 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 $16 million settlement was a “big, fat bribe.” The network canceled “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 licenses would be changing hands. Still, any deal of this size would need government approval, probably from Trump’s Justice Department, where antitrust chief Gail Slater just resigned.
In December, Trump has said he would be “involved” in vetting the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal, which has massive implications for Hollywood, movie theaters 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 U.S. Senate seat in Texas, which is holding its primary contests on March 3.
Though Colbert’s interview with Talarico didn’t broadcast over the airwaves, it 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.”
The post Stephen Colbert says CBS blocked interview with Texas Democrat over FCC concerns appeared first on Washington Post.
