FCC: Late-Night, Daytime Talk Shows Must Give Equal Time to Republican Candidates

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told late-night and daytime talk shows Wednesday that federal law requires them to give equal opportunities to political candidates from both sides of the aisle.

“For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late night and daytime talk shows qualify as ‘bona fide news’ programs—even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr stated on X.

“Today, the FCC reminded them of their obligation to provide all candidates with equal opportunities.”

Carr shared a public notice published Wednesday by the FCC about the federal equal time rule.

Under federal law, “if a broadcast station permits any legally qualified candidate for public office to use its facilities, it shall provide an equal opportunity to all other legally qualified candidates for that office,” the notice stated.

The law seeks to ensure that candidates aren’t unfairly given less access to the public airways than their opponent, according to the FCC.

Some exemptions to the equal time rule have been issued by the FCC in the past. In 2006, for instance, the FCC determined the interview portion of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” qualified for an exemption as a bona fide news interview. This was the first time the designation had been applied to a late night talk show.

Carr said concerns had been raised that the industry had decided that interviews of all entertainment programs—including late night or daytime—were exempt from equal opportunities requirement.

“This is not the case,” Carr stated.

Stations and programs were encouraged to petition the FCC for an exemption if they thought they qualified for one.

Studies on Bias

A study by the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group partly funded by Republican donor Robert Mercer, published Dec. 22, 2025, found late night comedy shows went six months—July through the first half of December—showing liberal guests 99 percent of the time.

The numbers matched the results from the first half of the year and the last half of 2024, according to the organization.

The study looked at ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” from July 7 through Dec. 19.

The shows featured 31 Democrat elected officials, 59 liberal journalists, and one conservative journalist, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News.

ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” also favored Democratic guests last year. For the first seven months of 2025, the women on the show spoke with 102 liberal guests and zero conservatives, the Media Research Center’s News Busters group found.

The jokes were also increasingly liberal, according to a study last year by the Media Research Center. The late night hosts told 12,011 of their 13,097 political jokes about conservatives last year—or 92 percent—up from 82 percent in 2024, the study found.

Representatives at Paramount, Warner Bros., and ABC did not return requests for comment.