Stephen Colbert says CBS barred interview with Texas Democratic candidate

Late-night show host Stephen Colbert has alleged that the CBS broadcaster blocked him from airing an interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, citing fears it would violate new regulatory guidance from the United States government.

Colbert’s comment on Monday overshadowed the start of early voting for Texas primaries, which feature a heated Democratic race between Talarico and US Representative Jasmine Crockett.

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Colbert said that CBS lawyers told him in “no uncertain terms” that Talarico could not appear on The Late Show on Monday.

“Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV,” Colbert said.

“I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him [Talarico] on, I could not mention me not having him on,” Colbert said.

“And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this,” he said.

CBS disputed Colbert’s account, saying its lawyers only “provided legal guidance” that broadcasting an interview with Talarico could trigger the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) equal-time rule.

Equal time rule

The rule requires broadcast networks to give equal time to political candidates, but it has not traditionally been applied to talk shows.

However, the Republican-led FCC said in January that daytime and late-night television talk shows are no longer considered “bona fide” news programmes that are exempt from equal time rules.

US media reported earlier this month that the FCC has opened an investigation into whether ABC’s The View daytime talk show violated equal time rules for interviews with political candidates after an appearance by Talarico.

Trump has repeatedly pushed FCC Chair Brendan Carr to take action against US broadcasters and criticised networks for what he views as one-sided coverage.

Colbert criticised Carr and CBS’s lawyers, saying they were unilaterally enforcing Carr’s directive for “purely financial reasons”.

His words echoed the explanation that CBS’s parent company, Paramount, provided when it announced in July that Colbert’s programme would go off the air in May, as it was seeking approval from the FCC for its $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media.

Colbert posted the interview with Talarico on the programme’s YouTube page, because online material does not fall under the equal-time rule.

The clip had about 2 million views as of 3pm local time, and millions more views on other platforms.

CBS said in a statement that its lawyers had presented options for how the equal time for other candidates, including Crockett, could be fulfilled. It added that the show “decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options”.

Talarico posted a nearly minute-long clip of his interview with Colbert on X, calling it “the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see”.

“I think Donald Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico told Colbert during their interview. “This is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”

Crockett, meanwhile, suggested that Colbert could have avoided an issue with the FCC by having her on the show, as he has in the past. Both she and Talarico have also appeared on The View.

There was no immediate comment from Paramount Skydance, Carr or the White House.

‘Another troubling example’

Until January, talk shows were deemed to have qualified for the equal opportunities exemption as genuine news interviews, ever since the FCC Media Bureau granted an exemption to the interview portion of Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show in 2006.

Networks have relied on the ruling as a precedent for recent interviews with political candidates.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, criticised CBS’s decision not to air the interview, calling it censorship.

She said the FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes, and that CBS has free speech rights to air the interview.

“This is yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech,” Gomez said. “It is no secret that Paramount, CBS’s parent company, has regulatory matters before the government, but corporate interests cannot justify retreating from airing newsworthy content.”

Paramount Skydance is seeking to buy Warner Bros Discovery.

Since Trump’s return to the White House last year, CBS has been accused of seeking to appease the president by appointing Bari Weiss, a conservative opinion writer with no television experience, to lead the storied broadcast network, as well as naming a former Trump appointee to oversee and address allegations of bias.

It also settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over an interview with his rival in the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to benefit the Democratic Party before the election.

The FCC’s Carr, meanwhile, has faced bipartisan criticism after he pressured broadcasters to take ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air in September, warning they could face fines or loss of licences.

Two major broadcasters said they would pull Kimmel off the air, and Disney briefly suspended Kimmel before restoring the show.

In December, Democratic US Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin told Carr, “You used your position within the federal government to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air in a clear attempt to chill free speech.”