FCC’s New Rule Blocks Stephen Colbert from Interviewing Texas Senate Candidate

By Susan Estrich
Saturday, 21 February 2026 09:40 AM EST

Stephen Colbert was right to be mad. His bosses at CBS blocked an interview he wanted to do with a Texas Senate candidate on his late-night talk show. But the blame cannot rest solely on CBS.

The fault lies, as it so often does these days, in the Trump administration, which last month announced new “guidance” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requiring “equal time” for candidates on entertainment-oriented talk shows.

This guidance was clearly aimed at Trump’s targets on late-night TV, including Jimmy Kimmel of ABC and Donald Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr. It grows out of longstanding conservative complaints about the late-night liberal conspiracy and the tendency of liberal hosts and guests to dominate.

This is not the small government/libertarian crowd. These are big government conservatives who seek to regulate the media landscape.

Until now, the broadcast industry — following the FCC’s lead — had taken the position that talk shows, like news programs, were exempt from the “public interest” requirement that stations must give rival candidates equal opportunities to buy time and appear on TV. Indeed, the FCC ruled explicitly in 2006 that interviews on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno were exempt.

Then came the new guidance. Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, stated: “This major announcement from the FCC should stop one-sided left-wing entertainment shows masquerading as ‘bona fide news.'”

Brendan Carr also said: “For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late-night and daytime talk shows qualify as ‘bona fide news’ programs — even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes. Today, the FCC reminded them of their obligation to provide all candidates with equal opportunities.”

As the Colbert example clearly demonstrates, the consequences of guaranteeing equal time for all candidates are most likely to be no time for any of them. What you’re really telling talk shows — including daytime programs like ABC’s “The View” — is to avoid politics entirely, a message that government should never send.

The FCC commissioners issued a statement calling what they were doing an “escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.” They stated: “Broadcasters should not feel pressured to water down, sanitize or avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation.”

Clearly, that is what happened at CBS. While Colbert expected the network to do more to protect him, CBS stated it had provided guidance on how to comply with the new rule, including by offering equal airtime to the two other Democrats in the race.

The larger question — whether the public interest is served by a rule adopted in 1927 to protect against then-powerful radio networks exerting undue influence on politics — remains unanswered. Brendan Carr knows his answer: he’s all in for regulation in what he sees as the public interest. Whether courts and Congress will follow, however, remains to be seen.