At the top of his show tonight, Stephen Colbert introduced the Late Show band, announced guest Jennifer Garner and then asked the audience, “You know who is not one of my guests tonight?”
The CBS host the answered his own question.
“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.
“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.”
The Late Night host went on to explain FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s new guidance on the “equal time” rule, which requires broadcasters who feature qualified political candidates on their airwaves provide time to rivals, if requested.
Deadline has reached out to CBS for comment and this post will be updated when it is received.
Traditionally, news content has been exempted from the equal time rule and, in recent decades, stations have assumed that it has applied as well as to daytime and late-night talk shows, like The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live, which have featured presidential and other candidates, including figures like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
New FCC guidance, though, signaled to those talk shows that they no longer should believe that they would fall under the so-called “bonafide news” exemption. Carr said that a determination on whether a show is exempt would come down to a number of factors, including whether there was a “partisan motivation” in featuring a political candidate as a guest. “If you’re fake news, you’re not going to qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” said Carr.
Colbert observed tonight, “It’s no surprise that two of the people most affected by this threat are me and my friend Jimmy Kimmel.”
Carr himself mentioned the duo in his recent comments, a clip of which Colbert played.
“If Kimmel or Colbert want to continue to do their programming,” said Carr, “and they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service and that’s fine.”
Colbert then said he was following Carr’s advice and posting the entirety of his Talarico interview on YouTube. You can watch it below.
Ted Johnson contributed to this report.