On his Wednesday, September 9, 2026 broadcast, Jimmy Kimmel announced that his interview the next night with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, would not air on ABC. It would be posted in full on the show's YouTube channel instead.
Kimmel told his audience he had been interviewing candidates for the show's entire 20-plus-year run, “just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio,” including Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Trump himself in 2015 and 2016, “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.” Then: “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.” He closed: “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.”
Two points of precision. Kimmel did not say the FCC ordered him not to air the interview, and no such order exists; this was a preemptive decision by the show and network. And he did not name the equal-time rule, though that is the mechanism every outlet covering the story identified. In January 2026, the FCC's Media Bureau issued guidance that late-night and daytime talk shows could no longer assume they qualified for the “bona fide news interview” exemption from the equal-time rule, an exemption the FCC had extended to Jay Leno's show in 2006. Commissioner Anna Gomez called the guidance “an escalation in this FCC's ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
The Texas affiliates Kimmel mentioned carry a specific history. After Talarico appeared on ABC's The View on February 2, the FCC opened an inquiry into the Houston ABC station, and 20 Texas ABC affiliates filed equal-time notices. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr confirmed an “enforcement action” was underway and said a host's political donations could be a factor in whether a program qualifies as news, noting that Kimmel had headlined a Democratic fundraiser. CBS lawyers had already kept Talarico off Stephen Colbert's broadcast in February (see CBS Blocks Colbert from Interviewing Democratic Candidate on Air After Trump's FCC Threatens 'Equal Time' Crackdown on Late-Night Shows); ABC filed a First Amendment challenge to the View investigation in May (see ABC Files With the FCC Accusing the Trump Administration of Violating Its First Amendment Rights Over an 'Equal Time' Investigation of The View); the FCC ordered early license reviews of every Disney station in April after Trump demanded Kimmel be fired (see The FCC Orders Early License Reviews of All Disney TV Stations Days After Trump Demanded Kimmel Be Fired for a Melania Joke); and Disney, ABC and its affiliates sued the FCC in August, calling the campaign an “extraordinary assault on free speech” and noting no candidate had appeared on The View since February 2. A hearing on the FCC's motion to dismiss is set for the week of October 5.
The FCC did not respond to Deadline, NBC News or KERA. The FCC and Disney declined to comment to Fox News. ABC Entertainment declined to comment. Talarico faces Attorney General Ken Paxton in November; his February Colbert interview, posted only to YouTube, drew more than nine million views and was followed by $2.5 million in donations in 24 hours.
The result is the one the pressure was designed to produce. A candidate for the U.S. Senate cannot appear on one of the country's largest broadcast networks in the weeks before an election, not because a regulator ruled he could not, but because the regulator made the cost of airing him high enough that the network chose not to find out.
Update (September 16, 2026): the Kimmel interview, posted to YouTube on September 10, passed 9 million views by the morning of September 14, which HuffPost, citing TheWrap, said made it Kimmel's second-most viewed video of 2026. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr responded on X on September 12: “He's just running the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations — he's banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings.” He added, “The Equal Time statute does not prohibit anyone from interviewing anyone on broadcast TV.”