Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers told The Late Show it could not broadcast his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. CBS disputed that account, saying it offered legal guidance and options for meeting any equal-time obligations; the show chose to publish the interview on YouTube instead. The FCC did not order the interview pulled or issue a final ruling on this specific segment.
What happened to the Talarico interview?
On a February 2026 episode of The Late Show, Colbert said Talarico had been scheduled to appear but would not be on the broadcast. Colbert said network lawyers directly told the show it could not have Talarico on the broadcast. The interview was posted to the show’s YouTube channel, and Colbert promoted it on air. CBS News updated its account of the dispute on February 18, 2026. CBS News’ report on Colbert’s account and CBS’s response
CBS gave a different account: “THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico.” The network said it had provided legal guidance that a broadcast could trigger equal-time obligations for two other candidates, including Representative Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for fulfilling those obligations. CBS said the show chose YouTube, with on-air promotion, rather than potentially providing the equal-time options. That is CBS’s account of the internal decision, not an independent finding about what happened.
The key disagreement is whether the legal advice operated as a prohibition, as Colbert described it, or presented choices the show could make, as CBS said. The public statements do not resolve that internal dispute.
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Did the FCC ban or order CBS to pull the interview?
No. The cited reporting describes a general FCC notice about how the existing equal-time law applies to talk-show interviews. It does not report an FCC order naming or prohibiting the Talarico interview, nor a final agency decision about this segment. CBS News reported on the notice on January 21, 2026, and said the notice questioned whether daytime and late-night entertainment interviews automatically qualify for the statutory news-interview exemption. CBS News’ report on the FCC notice
The notice did not formally amend the rule, according to CBS News’ reporting. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez objected that broadcasters should not feel pressured to avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation. FCC Chair Brendan Carr, by contrast, said the agency was reminding networks of equal-opportunity obligations. Those statements show the dispute over the notice’s implications; neither amounts to a case-specific ruling on Colbert’s interview.
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How the equal-time rule applies
Section 315 of the Communications Act generally requires a broadcast station that permits a legally qualified candidate to use its facilities to provide equal opportunities to other legally qualified candidates for the same office. The statute contains exceptions for bona fide newscasts, bona fide news interviews, documentaries, and on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events, subject to statutory conditions. The question raised by the FCC notice is whether a particular talk-show interview qualifies for an exemption—not whether the law has a blanket ban on candidate interviews.
The FCC notice described three factors for deciding whether a program qualifies as a bona fide news interview:
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- Regular schedule: Is the program regularly scheduled?
- Editorial control: Is the program controlled by the broadcaster or an independent producer?
- Newsworthiness: Are decisions about content, participants, and format based on newsworthiness rather than partisan purposes?
The notice characterized exemption determinations as fact-specific, based on the program as it existed when the agency considered a request. The notice itself is available as FCC DA 26-68.
Why the 2006 Jay Leno decision matters
Late-night interviews have received the news-interview exemption before. In an October 26, 2006 order, the FCC Media Bureau found that interview segments on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno qualified for the bona fide news interview exemption. That decision concerned the show and record before the agency at that time; it does not automatically decide whether The Late Show interview with Talarico qualifies under the factors described in the 2026 notice. FCC Media Bureau order DA 06-2098
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Why YouTube and broadcast television are different here
Equal-time rules for broadcast stations do not apply to an online posting in the same way they apply to broadcast use of a station’s facilities. That distinction explains how the interview could be unavailable in the television broadcast but appear on the show’s YouTube channel. It does not establish why CBS and the show reached their differing descriptions of the decision.
The Associated Press reported that the interview had more than five million YouTube views by Wednesday morning after publication. It also reported Talarico’s claim that his campaign received $2.5 million in donations in the 24 hours after the interview; that amount is an attributed campaign figure, not an independently audited total. The Associated Press report on the dispute and its aftermath
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