Democrats cry ‘equal time’ over Ted Cruz — FCC chair gives them a quick brutal lesson

BS BULLETIN:

University of Texas Democrats cried foul after Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” contrasting it with ABC’s decision not to broadcast Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says there’s a rather large legal problem with that comparison: ESPN is cable, and the federal equal-opportunities statute applies to broadcast stations.
There’s another one: Cruz isn’t running for office this year. Talarico is.

The University of Texas Democrats thought they had caught the FCC in a spectacular double standard.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says what they actually caught was a civics lesson.

The controversy began after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz appeared for roughly nine minutes Saturday on ESPN’s “College GameDay” in Austin to discuss legislation involving college sports.

The University Democrats contrasted Cruz’s appearance with the uproar surrounding Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, whose interview with Jimmy Kimmel was moved from ABC’s television broadcast to YouTube amid concerns about the FCC’s enforcement of political equal-opportunity requirements.

Carr finally jumped into the argument himself.

“Ok, fine. I’ll weigh in,” he wrote on X.

His first point was pretty fundamental. “The Equal Time statute doesn’t apply to GameDay for several reasons.”

Carr explained that Congress applied the law to broadcast television stations — “not cable programs like GameDay.”

That’s not merely Carr’s interpretation of the distinction.

FCC guidance itself says the federal equal-opportunities regulations apply to broadcast television stations and “do not apply to cable channels or other forms of distribution.”

Then Carr pointed out an even more obvious problem with the comparison. The law concerns appearances by legally qualified candidates. Cruz isn’t one.

The Texas senator isn’t up for reelection in 2026. Talarico, meanwhile, is actively running for the U.S. Senate against Republican Ken Paxton.

So Cruz appearing on ESPN doesn’t trigger the same legal question.

Carr also pushed back against the broader claim that the FCC is preventing Talarico from appearing on television.

“The Equal Time statute does not prohibit anyone from interviewing anyone on broadcast tv,” Carr wrote.

He argued that the law is intended to produce “more speech, not less,” by preventing broadcasters from giving preferential airtime to one candidate while denying comparable opportunities to opponents.

When the statute does apply, Carr said, stations simply must offer comparable time and placement — which doesn’t necessarily mean an opponent must appear with the same interviewer or even on the same program.

The fight stems from Kimmel’s decision not to broadcast his Talarico interview on ABC.

Kimmel told viewers the FCC had “threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network ABC, our affiliates, our local stations” over what he described as ordinary editorial decisions involving political guests. The Talarico interview instead went to YouTube, where it quickly attracted millions of views.

Talarico then promoted it as “the interview Trump’s FCC doesn’t want you to see.”

Carr isn’t buying that framing either.

He accused Talarico of running a “hoax” designed to generate “clicks and donations,” arguing that the candidate is counting on people misunderstanding what the statute actually requires.

There is a genuine larger dispute here.

For years, the FCC granted “bona fide news interview” exemptions to a wide variety of programs, including late-night shows. Under Carr, the commission has revisited whether entertainment-oriented daytime and late-night programs automatically deserve those protections when interviewing candidates.

ABC is fighting that interpretation.

But whatever ultimately happens in that much bigger First Amendment and regulatory battle, Carr’s point about Saturday’s Cruz appearance is considerably simpler:

ESPN isn’t broadcast television.

And Ted Cruz isn’t running against James Talarico.