FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threatened revisiting of the Equal Time rule has forced CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to not air an interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico. Instead Colbert ran the interview on his YouTube page — but not without letting Carr have it.
“[James Talarico] 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,” Colbert said. “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. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this… let’s talk about this.”
Colbert recapped the Equal Time provision—”the FCC’s most time-honored rule, right after ‘No nipples at the Super Bowl’”—which he’d previously addressed in the immediate wake of Carr indicating that he was looking into waiving the long-standing exemption for talk show interviews with politicians.
“Carr said… some of [the talk shows] were ‘motivated by partisan purposes,’” Colbert said, before adding: “Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC, so FCC you.”
The Late Show host then said he believed Carr was “motivated by partisan purposes” himself, and in that capacity has been “Dutch oven-ing America’s airwaves.”
