Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel has said an upcoming interview with Democratic Senate candidate from Texas James Talarico will not air on ABC after the federal media regulator “threatened” his show, ABC, and its local affiliates.
“Tomorrow night I’ll be interviewing James Talarico under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said during his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday.
Kimmel said that since the show began over 20 years ago, he has interviewed “Americans who are running for office with no problem at all,” noting that this ranged “from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.”
“I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015,” Kimmel said. Trump came back for another interview just before he became the Republican nominee in 2016.
‘Something Has Changed’
“But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed,” Kimmel continued. “Now that he is president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.”
“And so 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,” he said. “It will be posted on YouTube instead.”
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kimmel’s remarks.
The Texas Senate Race
Talarico is running for US Senate in Texas against Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate and state attorney general.
Kimmel’s announcement came amid increased scrutiny of broadcast television by the FCC under the Trump administration. In January, the agency issued guidance warning that daytime and late-night talk shows would be expected to comply with rules requiring broadcasters to give equal airtime to candidates running for the same office.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, talk shows have generally qualified for exemptions from those rules ever since the FCC granted such an exemption to Jay Leno’s Tonight Show in 1996.
A Pattern of Pressure
Earlier this year, in February, Stephen Colbert said Talarico was set to appear on an episode of The Late Show, which ran on CBS, until the network controversially canceled the series. But Colbert said: “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.” That interview also ran on YouTube.
Last year, following unusual pressure from the FCC, ABC temporarily suspended Kimmel’s late-night show for nearly a week over a monologue he delivered about the fatal shooting of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The Lawsuit
Last month, ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC, accusing the agency of violating the First Amendment in ordering an unusual early review of the network’s local station broadcast licenses.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the complaint alleges.
In an interview with the New York Times in August, FCC chairman Brendan Carr called the lawsuit “meritless” and denied that the agency was violating free speech rights. “Holding a broadcaster accountable to their public interest obligations and statutory obligations is not a violation of their First Amendment rights,” he said. Last week, the FCC asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
The Bottom Line
Jimmy Kimmel says his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on ABC after FCC threats. It will be posted on YouTube instead. Kimmel said the FCC has threatened his show, the network, and local affiliates over editorial decisions. The announcement comes amid increased FCC scrutiny of broadcast television and a lawsuit by ABC and Disney accusing the agency of violating the First Amendment. A similar interview with Talarico on CBS’s The Late Show was also pulled from broadcast and posted online.
