US late-night host Stephen Colbert accused CBS on Tuesday of refusing to broadcast his interview with a Democratic Senate candidate over fears it would violate regulatory guidance from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump has publicly attacked talk show hosts as partisan, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued new directives last month thattalk shows give equal time to rival political candidates.
CBS said last year it was scrapping Colbert’s “The Late Show”, which often features an opening monologue that takes aim at the Republican president.
The announcement came after CBS’s parent company Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 election rival Kamala Harris.
Colbert said on Tuesday that CBS pulled his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico from the broadcast the night over fears of violating the equal time rule — which Colbert argued has never applied to talk shows.
He referenced guidance from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr seeking to eliminate a perceived exemption to the rule for talk shows.
“He had not gotten rid of it yet, but CBS generously did it for him and told me unilaterally that I had to abide by the equal time rules, something I have never been asked to do for an interview in the 21 years of this job,” Colbert said on his show Tuesday.
“We looked, and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career, going back to the 1960s.”
CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that the network only “provided legal guidance” that broadcasting the interview could violate the FCC directive.
Colbert posted the nearly 15-minute interview with Talarico to YouTube, where it had more than 4.3 million views early Wednesday.
Source: Insider Paper
