Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel says an interview with Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico will be posted online instead of airing on ABC because of federal rules that could require the network to give similar airtime to Talarico's opponent.
Talarico, a state representative from the Austin area, is running against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate in November.
Kimmel announced the decision Wednesday night, a day before Talarico was scheduled to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" The interview will instead be posted on the show's YouTube channel, where Federal Communications Commission broadcast rules don't apply.
"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," Kimmel said during his Wednesday monologue.
This marks the second time this year that a major late-night show has moved an interview with Talarico online rather than broadcasting it on television. In February, Stephen Colbert interviewed Talarico for "The Late Show," but the conversation was posted to YouTube instead of airing on CBS. That interview has since drawn more than 9.5 million views.
Kimmel blamed the change on pressure from the FCC. He noted that Donald Trump appeared on the show while running for president in 2016.
"Now that he's president, his FCC 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.
Neither the FCC nor Talarico's campaign immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday.
Kimmel has clashed with the FCC before. In September 2025, ABC temporarily pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off the air following comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The suspension came hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr publicly criticized Kimmel's remarks and suggested ABC, its parent company Disney and local affiliates could face regulatory consequences. ABC brought Kimmel back less than a week later.
The dispute continued this year. In April, the FCC ordered an early review of the broadcast licenses for eight ABC-owned television stations, including one in Houston. The move came after President Trump publicly criticized ABC and Kimmel and called for the network's broadcast licenses to be revoked.
ABC and Disney sued the FCC in August, arguing the agency was using its authority over broadcast licenses to retaliate against the companies over their news coverage and programming, including "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
Carr has rejected that characterization, saying the FCC hasn't decided whether to renew the stations' licenses and would "continue to follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead."
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