FCC Chairman Brendan Carr blasted late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over the weekend, accusing him of running a hoax about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and the commission’s equal time rules — the same tactic Carr says Stephen Colbert previously used. The charge came as Carr also defended ESPN’s decision to feature Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on College GameDay, a move that triggered a wave of left-wing outrage and accusations of regulatory favoritism.
Writing on social media, Carr said Talarico, a Democrat running for Senate in Texas, is pushing a false claim that the FCC has been blocking him from appearing on television, and that Kimmel is helping spread it, according to Breitbart. Carr argued the two are “banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings,” and said the goal is “for the purpose of getting clicks and donations.” Carr described the effort as a rerun of a previous stunt involving Colbert.
The flare-up began after Cruz joined ESPN’s College GameDay during Saturday’s Texas–Ohio State game, where he discussed the Protect College Sports Act. An ESPN insider told Awful Announcing the booking was an “easy decision.” But as word spread, critics on the left questioned how ESPN could air a sitting senator without running afoul of FCC equal time requirements, especially given the commission’s ongoing reviews of ABC and other broadcasters over political content. Some accused the FCC of applying a double standard in favor of Republicans.
Why ESPN Didn’t Break the Rules
Carr stepped in to correct the record, explaining that the Equal Time statute simply does not apply to ESPN’s College GameDay for two reasons: the network is a cable channel, not a broadcast station, and the rules only kick in once a candidate is officially certified and an election is underway. Ted Cruz, he noted, is not a certified candidate for anything at the moment.
Even where the statute does apply, Carr argued, it does not bar broadcasters from interviewing anyone. The rule, he said, is about more speech rather than less. Congress, in his telling, wanted voters — not media gatekeepers — to decide elections, and it worried that stations could tip the scales by giving preferential airtime to some candidates while freezing out others. When the statute is triggered, it merely requires broadcast stations to offer comparable time and placement. And “comparable,” Carr added, does not necessarily mean the same interviewer on the same program.
Carr drew a distinction between cable outlets and over-the-air broadcasters, who operate under a different set of government assurances. Broadcasters receive free licenses worth billions of dollars to use the public airwaves, and in return they are promised that no competitor will be allowed to broadcast over their frequencies. Anyone else who wants to use that same spectrum to express their own views is out of luck — the government will eject them, Carr said.
That arrangement means Americans are effectively subsidizing broadcast distribution over a public resource to the tune of many billions of dollars, a bargain the government does not extend to cable or other media. To secure that assurance, radio and television broadcasters promise to act in the public interest, which is where the equal time rules come from. “But some broadcasters want to break their deal with the American people,” Carr said. “They want to keep their free access to billions of dollars worth of spectrum, of course. They are less eager these days to abide by their public interest obligations.”
The episode is the latest in a running fight over the FCC’s role in political broadcasting, one that has intensified as the commission reviews ABC and other networks over equal time complaints. The Cruz appearance gave critics a fresh opening, but Carr’s explanation turned the spotlight back on what he describes as a coordinated effort to misrepresent the law for political gain — with Kimmel, in Carr’s view, picking up where Colbert left off.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2026/09/14/fcc-chair-brendan-carr-slams-jimmy-kimmel-for-running-the-same-hoax-as-colbert-with-talarico-interview-stunt/