NEW YORK—Late night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel has announced that he will be streaming his Sept. 10 interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, on YouTube rather than showing it on TV because of potential regulatory issues.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has previously threatened ABC affiliate station licenses over comments made by Kimmel.
The FCC has also issued guidance that network late night programming and talk-shows are subject to political equal time rules and launched investigations into both ABC’s “The View” talk show and the broadcast licenses of ABC-owned stations, which have been required to go through an early renewal process.
“Tomorrow night, I'll be interviewing James Talarico tomorrow under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said in his opening monologue on Sept. 9, adding that the interview would appear on YouTube rather than TV..
“You know, for a lot of years, for the whole 20-plus years of our show, in fact, I've been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all, just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, et cetera, et cetera,” he added. “I've interviewed a lot of political candidates, from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz, to Donald Trump himself. I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015, and at that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates. In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016.”
But “[s]omething has changed now that he's president,” Kimmel said. “His FCC is threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings…[S]o out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas, who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television. It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.”
“So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel YouTube channel, where you will see it in its entirety,” he concluded. “And thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do.”
In response, FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez once again condemned the FCC’s attempt to enforce political equal times rules on talk shows and late night programming as an example of “just how far this Administration’s campaign of censorship and control has gone. This is now the second time in a matter of months that a late-night host has disclosed they had to bury an interview because of FCC intimidation, and there is no way to know how many other editorial decisions across the country have quietly been shaped by this same pressure.”
“No host, local affiliate, or network should have to weigh federal retaliation before booking a guest for a newsworthy interview,” she added. “Any attempt to pressure broadcasters into self-censorship undermines both press freedom and the public’s right to hear from candidates in their communities seeking public office.”
Gomez also repeated her longstanding arguments that “[t]he FCC has no lawful authority to threaten broadcast licenses over guest bookings or editorial decisions. Unlike other broadcasters who have quietly capitulated, Disney’s ABC has continued to fight this unlawful coercion in court, and episodes like this one only strengthen that case…I urge broadcasters everywhere to keep resisting this pressure, and I hope courts will soon make clear that the FCC has no place dictating editorial choices or what viewers are allowed to see.”
