ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has announced that a scheduled interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on the network, citing pressure from the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission over political candidates' equal time rules.
Talarico is running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Texas Senate race that analysts rate as a toss-up. The Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia's Center for Politics both classify the contest as competitive. An August poll by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University showed Talarico leading Paxton 47 percent to 45 percent among likely voters.
On Wednesday's broadcast, Kimmel said he would be interviewing Talarico under "unusual circumstances," noting that over the show's more than two decades on air, he had been "interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all."
In January, the Republican-led FCC ruled that daytime and late-night talk shows are no longer considered "bona fide" news programmes exempt from equal time rules, which require broadcasters to offer airtime to opposing candidates when one appears on air.
Kimmel noted that for decades talk shows had been free to interview political candidates without being subject to those rules, including interviewing President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
"Now that he is president, [Trump's] FCC 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," Kimmel said.
The interview with Talarico will instead be released on YouTube on Thursday.
The case is not isolated. The FCC previously opened an inquiry into Talarico's appearance on ABC's The View in February. CBS also declined to broadcast an interview he had recorded for a separate late-night programme; that interview was subsequently released online.
In April, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered early licence reviews for eight ABC-owned stations, an extraordinary step given that their licences were not due for renewal until 2028.
Critics say the agency's expanding reach into programming decisions risks chilling broadcasters' editorial independence.
The FCC's January rule change has drawn scrutiny across multiple networks. Several programmes, including The View and Saturday Night Live, have faced heightened FCC supervision over whether their political coverage and candidate appearances comply with federal equal time requirements.
The regulatory pressure coincides with other structural shifts in US broadcasting. The FCC voted in August to scrap its 39 percent cap on local television ownership, a move critics warned could concentrate control over broadcast news in fewer corporate hands.
Talarico, 37, is a former public school teacher who has built his political identity around a progressive interpretation of Christianity. Democrats describe the eighth-generation Texan as a promising candidate for ending the party's decades-long drought in Texas Senate races. The state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.
Republicans have moved to defend the seat. MAGA Inc, a political group aligned with Trump, committed $10 million to advertising against Talarico earlier this week, in what has been described as the first general election advertising buy made by Trump's political operation.
