Inside the Government’s Crackdown on TV

What It Covers

NYT reporter Jim Rutenberg traces how the FCC under chair Brendan Carr, influenced by Wisconsin lawyer Daniel Surr, is weaponizing a 1920s-era equal time rule against broadcast late night television, using license threat pressure to shape network content decisions — most visibly forcing CBS to pull a Stephen Colbert interview in early 2025.

Key Questions Answered

• •Equal Time Rule mechanics: The FCC's equal time rule requires broadcast stations to give all candidates for the same office identical airtime — same ratings window, free of charge, same duration — whenever one candidate appears on non-news programming. Networks cannot offer a 4am slot as compensation. This rule applies to broadcast only, not cable or streaming platforms like YouTube.
• •Legal limits of FCC threats: Despite Brendan Carr threatening to revoke station licenses over war coverage and late night content, communications lawyers across the political spectrum find these threats legally dubious. Revoking a broadcast license requires an onerous legal process the FCC cannot bypass. Networks still self-censor because prolonged federal litigation is costly and disruptive, regardless of likely courtroom outcome.
• •The Leno-Schwarzenegger precedent: In 2006, the FCC ruled that Arnold Schwarzenegger's repeated Tonight Show appearances alongside host Jay Leno qualified as bona fide news interviews, exempting NBC from equal time obligations. Late night broadly interpreted this single ruling as a blanket exemption — a misreading Carr now exploits by declaring the ruling was case-specific and never applied industry-wide.
• •Daniel Surr's complaint strategy: Surr, a conservative lawyer with no prior media law background, filed FCC complaints against an ABC Philadelphia station over the 2024 Harris-Trump debate and against CBS over a 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview, using the legal concept of "news distortion." His complaints were dismissed under the Biden FCC but reinstated by Carr immediately after Trump's January 2025 inauguration.
• •Selective enforcement risk: Carr's equal time enforcement targets broadcast television's liberal-leaning late night shows while leaving conservative talk radio — which reaches tens of millions of weekly listeners and regularly features political guests — entirely untouched. Legal experts note the equal time rule could technically apply to radio and potentially cable, raising a Pandora's box concern flagged by Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Rogan.