Carr Issues Equal Time Guidance Targeting Talk Shows
FCC Chairman Carr issued a Public Notice warning that late-night and daytime talk shows 'motivated by partisan purposes' could lose their exemption from equal time rules — while explicitly exempting conservative talk radio.
The Guidance
On January 21, 2026, the FCC Media Bureau issued a Public Notice warning television broadcasters that news interviews with political candidates conducted “on a program that is motivated by partisan purposes” are not exempt from the FCC’s equal opportunities rule.
Carr posted on X: “For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late night & daytime talk shows qualify as ‘bona fide news’ programs — even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes.”
What It Changed
The talk show exemption to the equal time rule had been in place since a 1959 amendment to the Communications Act. In 2006, the FCC explicitly ruled that “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” qualified as a bona fide news interview program exempt from equal time. No talk show interview had ever triggered equal time enforcement.
Carr’s guidance didn’t formally eliminate the exemption — he said he was “considering” doing so. But the threat was sufficient: CBS preemptively imposed equal time compliance on Colbert less than a month later.
The Selective Application
The guidance explicitly targeted television talk shows while exempting talk radio. Since late-night television skews critical of the Trump administration while talk radio skews supportive, this was content-based regulatory discrimination — precisely the kind of speech regulation the First Amendment is designed to prevent.