Kimmel Moves Talarico Interview Off ABC to YouTube, Citing FCC Threats Over Equal-Time Rule

Jimmy Kimmel told his ABC audience Wednesday night that his Thursday interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on television. Instead it goes straight to the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" YouTube channel.

"Now that [Trump] 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," Kimmel said, according to Fox News, CNBC, NBC News and The Independent, all of which carried the same monologue passage.

Kimmel said the move was made "out of consideration" for ABC's Texas affiliates, who he said would otherwise have to "deal with this nonsense." The interview will run in full on YouTube, a channel with roughly 22 million subscribers, according to The Daily Beast, compared with an ABC broadcast audience The Daily Beast put at around 1.8 million viewers per episode.

The Rule Behind the Fight

The mechanism here is the FCC's equal-time rule, which requires broadcast stations to offer comparable airtime to all legally qualified candidates for the same office if they give airtime to one of them. For roughly two decades, the FCC treated bona fide news and talk-show interviews as exempt from that requirement, according to NBC News.

That changed in January 2026, when the FCC issued a memo questioning whether late-night and daytime talk shows still qualify for that exemption, per NBC News and CNBC. The agency, chaired by Brendan Carr, has separately scrutinized ABC's "The View" over the same issue.

Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has President Trump's endorsement, in a Senate race CNBC and The Independent both describe as close, with recent polling showing Talarico slightly ahead. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House over corruption allegations and later acquitted by the state Senate, according to CNBC.

This Isn't the First Time

Stephen Colbert hit the identical wall in February 2026. His since-canceled CBS show didn't air its own Talarico interview, posting it to YouTube instead. Colbert said at the time CBS lawyers told him "in no uncertain terms" the interview couldn't air, per NBC News.

CBS gave a more measured explanation than Colbert did. The network said in a February statement that "the show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates." That's a legal compliance argument, not an admission of political pressure. Equal-time obligations are real law, not something CBS or ABC invented to appease anyone.

A reasonable defender of the FCC's position would note the equal-time rule predates Trump, applies regardless of party, and exists specifically so broadcasters can't tilt free airtime toward favored candidates. If talk-show interviews genuinely fall under that rule now, any network hosting one candidate does have real legal exposure to rival candidates demanding matching time.

What remains unresolved is why the rule's reinterpretation, after twenty years of exemption, has so far surfaced specifically around interviews with candidates critical of Trump, on shows already in the administration's crosshairs. No source in this story reports the FCC applying the same standard against a conservative-leaning host or a Republican candidate interview. Neither the FCC nor Talarico's campaign responded to requests for comment from CNBC, NBC News or The Independent.

ABC's Broader Legal Fight

This fits into a bigger dispute. Disney-owned ABC sued the FCC in August 2026, alleging the agency "waged a retaliatory campaign" against its networks by threatening to pull broadcast licenses, according to The Verge. That followed an April move by the FCC to launch early license renewals for ABC's eight owned-and-operated stations, tied to a DEI-practices investigation, per CNBC and NBC News.

Kimmel's show itself was pulled off the air for about a week in 2025 after comments he made following the killing of Charlie Kirk drew FCC criticism. ABC affiliate owners declined to air the show during that stretch, and Kimmel later said, "It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man."

The Daily Beast's headline calling this "Trump Goons Censoring" the interview is a characterization, not a documented fact. No charge, ruling, or FCC order establishes that framing, and the FCC has made no public statement on the Talarico interview specifically. Daily Wire and Fox News, by contrast, framed Kimmel's move as compliance driven by "equal time" fear rather than direct censorship, which tracks closer to what CBS said back in February.

Separately, Daily Wire reported Page Six's account that ABC does not plan to renew Kimmel's contract past May 2027, making next season his last. ABC disputed that, telling Page Six "this information is inaccurate" and that no decision has been made.

The Talarico interview posts to YouTube Thursday. Whether the FCC ever issues a formal ruling on talk-show equal-time obligations or whether ABC's lawsuit forces the agency to clarify its position will become clearer in the coming months as the Texas Senate race approaches in November.