The Hollywood Reporter just reported on the entire industry. In an X post and accompanying article, THR announced that political candidate appearances on daytime and late-night talk shows would "largely end" because the FCC intends to actually enforce the equal time rule for legitimate candidates during election season.
Read that framing carefully. The shows aren't going to comply with the rule by offering equal time to all candidates. They're going to stop booking candidates altogether rather than be forced to have everyone on.
According to Breitbart, the Hollywood Reporter put it plainly:
"The change doesn't necessarily prohibit interviews with political candidates but imposes obligations requiring them to give comparable time to opponents. In practice, it will prevent networks from having anyone on by potentially forcing them to have everyone on."
There it is. The quiet part, out loud. These shows would rather shut down political bookings entirely than give conservative candidates the same airtime they hand to their preferred Democrats. If that isn't an admission of systematic bias, it's hard to imagine what would be.
The equal time provision isn't new. Congress passed it for a specific and obvious reason: to prevent media gatekeepers from picking winners and losers in American elections. The FCC has simply been looking the other way for decades, allowing network talk shows to function as de facto campaign platforms for favored candidates while freezing out their opponents.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr framed the enforcement in exactly those terms:
"Congress passed the equal time provision for a very specific reason. They did not want the media leads in Hollywood and in New York to put their thumbs on the scale and pick their winners and losers in primaries and general elections. That's the point."
Nothing about this is radical. A law already on the books will now be enforced. The only people panicking are the ones who benefited from its neglect.
The dynamics playing out in the Texas Democratic Senate primary illustrate the problem with surgical precision. Stephen Colbert reportedly elevated James Talarico, the establishment's preferred candidate, while snubbing Rep. Jasmine Crockett, one of his primary opponents. Businessman Ahmad Hassan, another legitimate candidate in the race, was apparently invisible to the late-night bookers as well.
Under the equal time rule, if Colbert gives Talarico a segment, the network owes comparable time to Crockett, Hassan, and every other legitimate candidate in the primary. That obligation kicks in when the primary is less than 60 days away, and it applies to shows that air four or five times a week. The networks would have up to two months to meet the requirement.
In a typical two, three, or four-person primary, that's manageable. In a larger field, it becomes a logistical headache. But that's not actually the problem the networks are worried about. The problem is that compliance would expose the favoritism. When you've been running a curated audition for your preferred candidates, being forced to share the stage reveals exactly what you were doing.
Even Crockett, a Democrat, apparently recognized what happened to her. You don't need to be a conservative to notice when the game is rigged against you. You just need to be the wrong Democrat.
Consider the logic of THR's own reporting. The publication didn't argue that talk shows have been fair and balanced all along. It didn't claim the shows already give equal time to candidates across the spectrum. It simply announced that, rather than comply with fairness obligations, the shows will stop booking politicians entirely.
That response only makes sense if the current system is built on selective access. If Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon were already treating candidates from both parties equitably, the equal time rule would change nothing. Compliance would be automatic. The fact that enforcement is treated as an extinction-level event for political bookings tells you everything about how those bookings have been handled.
The entertainment industry spent years insisting its late-night and daytime shows were just comedy, just entertainment, just harmless fun. But when the FCC says "fine, then give equal time to all candidates," suddenly these shows admit they've been functioning as political platforms all along. They only opened the door to one side.
Come September or thereabouts, general election obligations will layer on top of the primary rules. The networks face a choice: book candidates from both parties and comply with the law, or book no candidates at all. They've already telegraphed their preference.
This is clarifying. For decades, conservatives have argued that network talk shows serve as unpaid campaign advertising for Democrats. The standard response was dismissal: you're paranoid, it's just comedy, nobody takes it seriously. Now the shows themselves are confirming the arrangement by refusing to operate under rules that require fairness.
The equal time rule doesn't silence anyone. It doesn't censor content. It doesn't pull shows off the air. It simply says: if you give a platform to one candidate, you owe the same courtesy to their opponents. The networks would rather go dark on politics than meet that standard.
They didn't even try to pretend otherwise.