“So the FCC won’t let me be/Or let me be me, so let me see/They try to shut me down on ABC/but it feels so empty without me.” — Jimmy Kimmel, sort of.
On Thursday night, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show posted its James Talarico interview to YouTube. While there’s nothing unusual about sharing host Jimmy Kimmel’s interviews to YouTube, the strange part about this particular interview is that the guest segment never aired on ABC — the FCC shut that down real fast.
Kimmel on Wednesdaytold his audiencethat his show would move the Talarico interview to YouTube.
“Out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television,” he said.
Kimmel and FCC chair Brendan Carr have an adversarial relationship. Their beef has led to one (brief) suspension, mounting threats against Disney/ABC, and now, this.
“You know, for a lot of years, for the whole 20-plus years of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all, just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, etc. etc., I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates. From Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump,” Kimmel said. “I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015, and at that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates. In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016. But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed.”
Carr and the FCC are leaning hard on the so-called “equal time rule” for political candidates. It’s the same selective enforcement that kept Talarico off of Stephen Colbert’s airwaves. (Back when Colbert still had an airwave.)
Talarico spoke out about the Kimmel situation Thursday on MS Now’s The Weeknight.
“I think it’s the most dangerous form of cancel culture,” he said. “People at the top, powerful politicians, powerful media executives, censoring what we watch, what we read, what we say. And that, again, should be a concern to everyone who believes in the First Amendment and believes in the freedom of speech.”
“I’m still hopeful that we can have this interview on the air. So we’ll see what happens tonight,” Talarico added.
Sorry bud, didn’t happen. But you can watch the 20-plus-minute Kimmel and Talarico interview in full, below: