FCC regulatory pressure led ABC to pull Kimmel's interview with Senate candidate Talarico from broadcast, Kimmel says

On September 9, 2026, Jimmy Kimmel announced on his ABC broadcast that his show would not air its taped interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, saying the Federal Communications Commission "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 he was keeping the interview off broadcast out of consideration for ABC's affiliate stations, and instead posted it to his show's YouTube channel the next evening, where the FCC has no regulatory reach and it drew millions of views within a day. Talarico, who is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, called the outcome "the most dangerous form of cancel culture" and said he believed Republicans feared he could win his race.

The decision followed a documented FCC campaign against ABC and Kimmel. In January 2026, the FCC under Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr issued guidance stating that late-night and daytime talk shows are not exempt from the equal-time rule requiring broadcasters to give rival candidates comparable airtime, and it opened an investigation of The View after the show hosted Talarico. The FCC had separately ordered an early, years-ahead-of-schedule review of Disney-owned ABC's broadcast licenses in April 2026, and Carr had threatened those licenses the previous September over Kimmel's on-air remarks about Charlie Kirk -- actions Disney and ABC have since sued the FCC over as retaliatory. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's sole Democrat, said Kimmel's decision "shows just how far this Administration's campaign of censorship and control has gone," calling it "intimidation" and noting it was the second time in months a late-night host had pulled a Talarico interview under the same fear -- CBS kept Stephen Colbert's interview with Talarico off its broadcast in February 2026 for the same stated reason.

A White House spokesman denied Carr had specifically threatened Kimmel over the booking, calling Kimmel's account "play-acting" meant to create "a false narrative," and Carr did not comment directly on this interview. No public written FCC order naming this booking has surfaced; the pressure Kimmel and Gomez describe rests on the FCC's broader equal-time guidance and its unresolved license fight with ABC, not a single documented directive against this interview.

Updates

2026-09-12 — Carr publicly called Talarico's interview coverage a "hoax" as the clip went viral [9, 10]

As the YouTube clip of Kimmel's interview with Talarico passed several million views, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X that Talarico was "just running the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations," accusing him of "banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings." Carr's post continued the agency's public pressure around the interview and its underlying equal-time-rule dispute, without addressing the FCC's role in keeping the interview off broadcast.