Stephen Colbert told his audience Monday night that CBS lawyers had pulled his interview with Texas state Representative James Talarico — a Democratic candidate for the US Senate — and then told him he could not even mention the censorship on air. The network’s reasoning, according to NBC News, was that broadcasting the interview could trigger equal-time obligations under FCC rules, potentially requiring the network to offer equivalent airtime to every other Senate candidate in the race. The practical effect: a sitting member of Congress, running in a competitive primary with early voting already underway in Texas, never appeared on one of the most-watched late-night programs in the country.
The story would be unremarkable — equal-time disputes are as old as broadcast television — except for the context in which it is unfolding. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, appointed by President Trump, issued a letter on January 21 warning broadcasters that he was "considering eliminating exceptions" to the equal-time rule that have long protected interview programs, documentaries, and news coverage from triggering mandatory airtime requirements. The letter did not constitute a formal rule change. But it did not need to. The signal was sufficient.
This is where the structural distinction between broadcast and digital media becomes essential. Unlike cable networks, streaming services, or print and digital publications, broadcast television stations hold licenses issued by the federal government. Those licenses — legally required to operate over public airwaves — come up for renewal on a regular cycle and can, in principle, be challenged or revoked. The FCC has not revoked a major network’s license in modern memory, but the threat does not need to be exercised to be effective. The mere possibility creates what communications lawyers call a "chilling effect": self-censorship driven not by a formal order but by the rational calculation that regulatory trouble is best avoided.
"Corporate capitulation" is how FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democratic appointee, described the CBS decision in a statement that did not mince words. Commissioner Gomez added that the FCC has "no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes" — a striking rebuke delivered from inside the same agency whose chairman had issued the January letter.
CBS offered a more measured explanation. In a statement, the network said the show received legal guidance that broadcasting the interview could trigger equal-time obligations for other candidates and chose YouTube distribution with on-air promotion as an alternative. That response treats the matter as a routine legal compliance decision. Critics, including Talarico himself, see it differently. "Trump’s FCC colluded with corporate media executives at CBS to keep that interview off the air," Talarico told reporters, accusing the administration of "selling out the First Amendment." Colbert, for his part, said the administration’s goal was to "silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV."
The digital epilogue to this story illustrates the paradox of applying 20th-century regulatory tools to a 21st-century media environment. After Colbert disclosed the suppression on his broadcast, the interview — posted to YouTube — went viral. Millions of viewers watched online what CBS declined to air over its own network. The FCC regulates broadcast frequencies, not the internet. Whatever leverage the Carr letter may have exercised over a CBS license holder evaporated the moment the clip circulated freely on social media. As the New Republic noted, the attempt at censorship backfired spectacularly in purely strategic terms.
But the backfire should not obscure the underlying mechanism. The question is not whether this particular interview ultimately reached its audience — it did, via YouTube. The question is what other editorial decisions are being made in broadcast newsrooms across the country that never become public, driven by the same calculation CBS’s lawyers appear to have made: that the regulatory cost of airing content uncomfortable to the current administration is not worth bearing. That is a question that does not answer itself, and whose answer the public may never see.
The equal-time rule dates to the Communications Act of 1934, modified by the Federal Communications Act of 1959. For most of its history it has been a background feature of broadcast regulation — occasionally litigated, never weaponized as an instrument of political pressure by an FCC chairman. Whether Chairman Carr’s January letter represents a genuine policy shift or a deliberate warning shot may ultimately be determined by what CBS and its competitors do next.
