FCC

Joe Lancaster | 1.23.2026 11:55 AM

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........

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