By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — A recent FCC inquiry to ABC about a possible “equal time” rule violation at “The View” raised concerns at CBS that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” could be targeted next, according to people familiar with CBS’s deliberations.
The government pressure clearly had an impact. Lawyers for CBS contacted Colbert’s show during his Monday taping. The unusual intervention became a national news story when Colbert told viewers all about it that evening.
In a follow-up on Tuesday night, Colbert said of CBS parent company Paramount, “I’m just so surprised that this giant, global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.”
The “bullies,” in Colbert’s telling, are Trump administration appointees who are using antiquated FCC regulations to pressure Trump critics on broadcast TV.
Many critics are now calling out CBS for flinching rather than forcefully standing up to politically motivated intimidation.
“Just like the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco from last year, the FCC didn’t have to actually do anything — just issue threats bold enough to scare those who control broadcast networks to obey in advance,” longtime media critic Eric Deggans wrote.
The threats have come from FCC chair Brendan Carr, who indicated last month that his Trump-aligned agency will enforce the “equal time” rule that previous agency heads downplayed.
The rule states that if one candidate for public office gets free airtime on a local TV or radio station, the other candidates for that office have a right to airtime, too.
FCC regulations do not apply to cable channels like CNN or streaming platforms like YouTube, which is why Colbert directed his fans to YouTube on Monday night.
Inside the Talarico decision
The CBS intervention stemmed from Colbert’s interview with James Talarico, a Texas state representative and rising star in the Democratic Party, who is currently running in the Texas Senate primary.
The other leading candidate in the race is Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who has also appeared on Colbert in the past, but not during this Senate primary campaign.
A strict reading of the “equal time” rule indicates that the third candidate in the race, Ahmad Hassan, would also qualify for equal time.
But the rule contains big exemptions for news coverage, and for the past two decades, that exemption has also been thought to apply to late-night and daytime talk shows.
Carr is trying to eliminate those exemptions — and observers say it’s no coincidence that those shows skew left. President Donald Trump frequently inveighs against Colbert and other late-night hosts.
Carr “had not gotten rid of [the exemption] yet, but CBS generously did it for him,” Colbert asserted Tuesday night.
Colbert said CBS “told me unilaterally that I had to abide by the equal time rules, something I have never been asked to do for an interview in the 21 years of this job.”
CBS said in a statement that “The Late Show” was given “legal guidance” about how to abide by the FCC regulations.
Talarico leaned into the controversy on Tuesday, incorrectly claiming that Trump’s FCC “refused to air” the interview, when in fact CBS made that decision.
“Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico wrote on X.
His team also noted that the YouTube video registered millions of views. Curiosity about the controversy helped the interview attract a much larger audience than it would have on the traditional CBS platform.
The attention was timely for Talarico — coming at the start of the primary’s early voting window — and lucrative for his campaign.
On Wednesday morning, the campaign said it raised $2.5 million, a single-day record for Talarico, in the 24 hours after the “censo