As a rule, when Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’s “The Late Show,” generates headlines, it’s because of something funny he said on his award-winning show. This week, however, Colbert and his program made news for an entirely different reason.
On Monday night, the host was scheduled to interview Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a leading Democratic U.S. Senate candidate there. That interview happened, but it was shown online instead of on the CBS broadcast — a decision that, according to Colbert, was driven by the network’s lawyers and a fear based on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s approach to an old policy called the “equal-time rule,” which has never applied to news interviews and talk show programs.
The host, after telling his audience that he was defying the network’s directive not to talk about what happened, concluded, “Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper.”
On Tuesday afternoon, as public interest in the story grew, CBS issued a written statement insisting that Colbert was not prohibited from airing the Talarico interview. Rather, the network said the CBS lawyers “provided legal guidance,” which included “options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.”
Soon after, while the host filmed Tuesday night’s show, Colbert referred to CBS’ statement as “crap” and picked up a copy of the statement in a dog waste bag. “I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies,” he added.
The host received some backup from Anna Gomez, a Democratic member of the FCC, who said in a statement, “This is yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech. The FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes or to create a climate that chills free expression.”
Gomez added, “CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing.”
But as the developments unfolded, a related question needed an answer: Would all of this lead more people to take an interest in the interview that wasn’t included in the broadcast? The New Republic summarized:
Instead of including the interview in his CBS show Monday night, which the network’s lawyers had warned against, Colbert posted the interview to YouTube and other social media channels, where it has already garnered millions of views on each platform, much more than a single TV broadcast of the show, which averages 2.3 million viewers.
As of this writing, the YouTube video of the interview has generated more than 5.2 million views.
What’s more, the hullabaloo appears to have given Talarico a boost just two weeks before primary day in Texas. The Democrat raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after the segment was posted online — the single best day of fundraising for his candidacy thus far.
The state legislator, who accused the FCC of “colluding” with CBS, told supporters at a rally in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, “I think it’s safe to say that their plan backfired. These are the same people who ran against cancel culture, and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”
The Streisand effect remains a real phenomenon.
