Another late-night talk show has pre-empted an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico: This time, it’s ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
On Wednesday’s episode of “JKL,” Kimmel revealed that his interview with Talarico, who’s running for Senate as the Texas Democratic candidate, won’t be aired on the show’s over-the-air broadcast. Instead, it will be shown on YouTube.
Kimmel explained that the decision not to air Talarico’s interview on broadcast came out of concerns that a politically motivated FCC has continually threatened ABC station licenses.
“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. It will not be on TV.”
In February, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was also told it couldn’t run an interview with Talarico. At the time CBS lawyers had barred Colbert from airing the interview in a preemptive bow to FCC pressure over the agency’s push to apply its “equal time” rule to late-night talk shows. Ultimately, the Talarico campaign raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after Colbert revealed he was barred from airing the interview, and the YouTube clip garnered 9.5 million views.
Kimmel has reasons to be concerned: Under the FCC chairman Brendan Carr, the agency has arguably been weaponized, as it aggressively takes on critics of the Trump administration. That includes threatening to pull the licenses of ABC’s eight owned-and-operated local TV stations, demanding ABC take action against Kimmel last year (by saying “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”) and initiating a formal review of whether ABC daytime talk show “The View” qualifies for an exemption to the agency’s equal-time rules for political candidates.
As a result, ABC sued the FCC, alleging the commission was waging an “extraordinary assault” on its free-speech rights.
Kimmel noted that political candidates appeared on late-night talk shows for generations — including when Trump appeared on “JKL” while running for president in 2015.
“But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed now that he is president,” Kimmel said. “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.”
Later, he added: “So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live‘ YouTube channel, where you will see it in its entirety. And thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November, of course. Make sure you’re registered to vote, by the way, because that’s the most important thing you can do.”
Here’s his full monologue bit from Wednesday night:
“Tomorrow night, I’ll be interviewing James Talarico — tomorrow night, under unusual circumstances. You know, for a lot of years, for the whole 20-plus years of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all, just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself. I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015. And at that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates. In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016.
“But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed 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. It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.
“So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel where you will see it in its entirety. And thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November, of course. Make sure you’re registered to vote, by the way, because that’s the most important thing you can do.”
