The FCC said that The View and other daytime and late-night talk shows that feature political candidates as guests may be on the hook for equal time.
But following a lengthy statement from the agency’s Media Bureau, the sole Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, characterized it as “government intimidation.”
Donald Trump‘s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has previously targeted The View, casting doubt last year on whether the show was exempt from the agency’s equal opportunity rule, also known as the equal time rule. The regulation requires that if a legally qualified candidate appears on a broadcast, a station has to provide airtime for rival candidates for the same office. There is an exemption for news programming, including newscasts, interview programs, certain types of news documentaries and “bona fide news events.”
Over the years, the exemptions have been taken to include candidates who appear on talk shows like The Tonight Show and The View, appearances that have become much more commonplace since Bill Clinton played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show during the 1992 presidential campaign.
In 2006, the FCC determined that the interview portion of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno fell under the exemption, following an appearance by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the late-night program. His rival in his reelection campaign that year, Phil Angelides, had sought equal time, but was rebuffed.
While well-known political candidates have proliferated on talk shows in recent decades, were talk shows not exempted from such rules, it would put the burden on individual stations to provide the same airtime to far-less famous rivals.
The new FCC statement warns that the 2006 decision should not be taken to mean that all interview portions of talk shows fall under the exemptions. The agency noted that the decisions “are fact specific and the exemptions are limited to the program that was the subject of the request.”
“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 stated “Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for
example, would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent.”
The FCC said that programs or stations should file a petition to seek a declaratory ruling that qualify for the news exemption.
The rule applies only to broadcasters who feature political candidates, not political speech in general. That said, Carr warned ABC last year over comments that Jimmy Kimmel made following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and the network pulled the show for several days. After a backlash, Kimmel was reinstated.
In her statement, Gomez said that nothing has changed following the FCC’s announcement. The FCC “has not adopted any new regulation, interpretation, or Commission-level policy altering the long-standing news exemption or equal time framework.
She added, “For decades, the Commission has recognized that bona fide news interviews, late-night programs, and daytime news shows are entitled to editorial discretion based on newsworthiness, not political favoritism. That principle has not been repealed, revised, or voted on by the Commission. This announcement therefore does not change the law, but it does represent an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
She said that broadcasters “should not feel pressured to water down, sanitize, or avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation. Broadcast stations have a constitutional right to carry newsworthy content, even when that content is critical of those in power.”
The Trump administration has lashed out at The View in particular, suggesting to Entertainment Weekly in July that it would be next to be “pulled off the air.” That followed comments about Trump made by co-host Joy Behar.
The FCC’s new guidance was aimed at TV broadcasters, but the rule applies to radio as well, noted Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society. That is potentially significant, given the proliferation of talk shows featuring personalities like Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity, interviewing various political figures including those for elective office.
“Where it really matters is talk radio, where hosts are blatantly partisan,” Schwartzman said.
He doubted that the guidance would have a substantial impact on network talk shows, given that it applies to “legally qualified candidates,” narrowing the field to those in a primary or who are a party standard bearer in a general election.
Ironically, Trump triggered one of the highest profile recent examples of equal time, when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 2015. The entertainment show does not have an interview portion and does not fall under the exemption, so NBC affiliates were on the hook to give airtime to lesser known rivals for the Republican nomination. The requirement for NBC to do so, Schwartzman said, was “not a big deal.”
In 2024, after Kamala Harris made a cameo appearance on SNL in the waning days of the campaign, NBC quickly provided equal time to the Trump campaign during sports broadcasts the next day. But Carr still criticized the network for featuring Harris so close to the election.
