The FCC Wants To Police How Many Conservatives Appear on The View
The equal-time rule is an antiquated regulation that becomes more obsolete with each passing year.
This week, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr announced new directives for TV networks to follow in order to maintain their broadcasting licenses.
"For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late night & daytime talk shows qualify as 'bona fide news' programs—even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes," Carr wrote Wednesday on X. "Today, the FCC reminded them of their obligation to provide all candidates with equal opportunities."
When a qualified candidate for public office appears on a licensed broadcast station in the weeks before an election, under the equal opportunities requirement—better known as the equal-time rule—the network must "afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office." The law includes exceptions for "bona fide" news coverage: If a network covers a news story about the president, for example, the law does not then require covering every other presidential candidate the same amount.
The new directive says that the FCC, when determining whether a particular broadcast is exempt from the rule, would consider criteria such as "whether decisions on the content, participants, and format are based on newsworthiness, rather than partisan purposes, such as an intention to advance or harm an individual's candidacy."
The memo is a bad idea for several reasons. Even taking Carr at his word that certain shows are hopelessly partisan, that hardly justifies using government power to change them. Besides, Carr seems to relish his reputation as President Donald Trump's "media attack dog"—when he's the one in charge, should we really trust his agency to assess whether The View has enough conservative guests on?
In fact, the argument that broadcasters must be tightly regulated to give Americans access to a broad range of information makes little sense these days. When the equal-time rule originated in the 1930s, it applied to radio, and for much of its subsequent history, the three broadcast networks were the only TV channels. The average household now has access to hundreds of cable channels, not to mention streaming services, YouTube, and social media—none of which are subject to the FCC's heavy hand.
Carr threatens network daytime and late-night shows with reprisal if they don't offer candidates equal time. But Fox News' late-night show Gutfeld!, which draws more viewers than any of the networks, can have on any guests it wants, since the content of cable TV generally falls outside the FCC's purview. The same goes for social media platforms like TikTok, where 1 in 5 Americans regularly gets their news. The idea that ABC, NBC, and CBS control the flow of information is quaint.
Broadcast networks have been losing viewers for years. "Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025," Nielsen found in June 2025, "while broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) combined to represent 44.2% of TV." In other words, 80 percent of all that we watch on TV is not even subject to the same level of FCC regulation, including the equal-time rule.
The decline of broadcast doesn't mean Carr's memo is insignificant. In fact, it could lead to onerous governmental nitpicking of the sort that has already been a trademark of Carr's time heading the FCC.
In September 2025, ABC briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show after Carr threatened FCC action, stemming from his interpretation of a joke in Kimmel's monologue that mentioned the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Right away, Carr gloated about Kimmel's suspension and suggested daytime talk show The View could be his next target.
"I would assume you could make the argument that The View is a bona fide news program," he told conservative commentator Scott Jennings. "But I am not so sure about that, and I think it is worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs."
It seems he got his answer. "The FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption," Carr's memo argues. "Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent."
Of course, assessing "partisan purposes" is a very subjective task, and Carr has proven eager to use government power against his political opponents.
Carr complained when then–Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, briefly appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live days before the 2024 election. He accused NBC of "biased and partisan conduct" and "evad[ing] the FCC's Equal Time rule." And when Trump filed a bogus lawsuit baselessly accusing CBS of maliciously editing its preelection interview with Harris on 60 Minutes, Carr held up parent company Paramount's pending merger until it agreed to settle the lawsuit and institute "significant changes" in how its news division operated.
Carr "sees correcting anti-Trump bias as an important part of his job," Jacob Sullum wrote in the February/March issue of Reason, in a piece about the FCC's history of policing speech. "In fact, Carr seems eager to embrace what he once derided as 'a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the "public interest."'"
The equal-time rule is an antiquated regulation that becomes more obsolete with each passing year. It's no longer the case that broadcast networks are Americans' only—or even main—source of information. It shouldn't be up to the FCC to decide if talk shows are the right amount of partisan. If viewers don't want to watch, it's easier than ever to just watch something else.
