Stephen Colbert said on his late-night show on Monday that his network, CBS, barred him from airing an interview with a Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate race because of new guidance from the Trump administration about equal airtime for political candidates.
It’s the first time that a late-night talk show has changed its programming to meet the demands of that update from the Federal Communications Commission, which has over the last year ramped up its efforts to crack down on the major media companies for perceived bias.
Mr. Colbert, a frequent critic of President Trump, made it clear he did not make the change willingly. Over six minutes on Monday’s edition of “The Late Show,” Mr. Colbert blasted Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C. And, in a rebuke of CBS, Mr. Colbert said that “because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
Mr. Colbert said that CBS lawyers had told him “in no uncertain terms” that an interview he had planned for Monday’s show with the Texas state Representative James Talarico would not air on the show, even though the lawmaker was already in Mr. Colbert’s studio. Early voting in the Texas primary election began on Tuesday, where Mr. Talarico is competing against Jasmine Crockett to be the state’s Democratic nominee to run against Senator John Cornyn, a Republican.
Mr. Colbert pointed to new guidance from the F.C.C. from January, warning media companies that talk shows carried on local broadcast networks were required to offer equal airtime to candidates competing for the same office.
There has long been an exemption to that rule for “bona fide news” programming, such as evening news programs. Media companies have long taken it as a given that late-night shows qualified for the same exemption, particularly after the F.C.C. ruled in 2006 that interviews on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” were considered bona fide news.
After the F.C.C. issued its new guidance, Mr. Carr underscored that was no longer the case.
“For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late-night & daytime talk shows qualify as ‘bona fide news’ programs — even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes,” he said on X last month. “Today, the F.C.C. reminded them of their obligation to provide all candidates with equal opportunities.”
Representatives for the F.C.C. and Mr. Colbert declined to comment. A CBS spokesman did not respond to calls for comment.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly lashed out against many late-night hosts since he returned to the White House last year — just this weekend, he insulted Bill Maher, the HBO talk show host, in a post on Truth Social.
Mr. Carr has taken particular aim at late night and daytime television shows that he believes are biased.
Last year, ABC removed “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from its airwaves for almost a week after Mr. Carr suggested that the administration could punish the network because of remarks the late-night host had made in a monologue.
Earlier this month, the F.C.C. started a probe into ABC’s “The View” because of an interview with Mr. Talarico, Fox News reported.
On Monday’s show, Mr. Colbert repeatedly criticized Mr. Carr, at one point saying that he looked like a “smug bowling pin,” and saying that he believed Mr. Carr was “motivated by partisan purposes.”
“Let’s just call this what it is,” Mr. Colbert said. “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV.”
Mr. Colbert went on to say that he and Mr. Kimmel were “two of the people most affected by this threat” because they had promptly criticized the new guidance when it was announced last month.
Because the equal-time provisions apply only to broadcast airwaves, Mr. Colbert announced his interview with Mr. Talarico would be posted to his show’s YouTube page, though he said that network lawyers told him not to give out a URL or a QR code to the link.
That interview had more than 1.7 million views on YouTube early Tuesday afternoon, significantly more than the 93,000 views of a video of Mr. Colbert interviewing Jennifer Garner, who was also a guest on Monday’s episode.
The F.C.C.’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, said on Tuesday that CBS’s refusal to air the interview was “another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech.”
Mr. Colbert is in his final months hosting “The Late Show,” which will go off the air in May. CBS has said that the show’s cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” but many have continued to speculate that the network removed the show for political reasons.
CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is also competing with Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Any deal would require the blessing of the federal government.
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
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