• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 6 hours ago

Going forward, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seems to believe late-night entertainment needs some extra deep bipartisan laughter, smirks, or winks.

Since the early 1990s, late-night TV shows -- long considered “news programs” -- started getting a waiver when it comes to “equal time” rules.

Those rules mean giving TV stations/programs airtime to all legally qualified political candidates after a program or station agreed and aired an interview of one of those candidates.

The waiver came about with the idea these TV talk shows were not truly straight-ahead news programming.

Now in published guidance on its website on Wednesday, the FCC says it could end that waiver.

“The FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona
fide news exemption.”

Recently, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has implied that if certain programs like “The View” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” appear to have partisan motivations with interviews of certain politicians, that could risk TV station licenses.

Take the broader look of the playing field: So should we then look at all kinds of programming including -- perhaps Fox News Channel's “Gutfeld!” or other politically focused new shows that regularly have a strong entertainment and/or comedy bent?

“Gutfeld!” -- a show that has been on the air since 2016 -- now regularly competes for late night viewers with the likes of “Jimmy Kimmel!”, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”

The show films in front of a live audience and also regularly interviews politicians, as do other late-night shows. “Gutfeld!” guests almost always come from the Republican party or conservative-leaning commentators.

What type of shows should we now expect? Typically, giving equal time to an opposing candidate in a specific time period on a TV station or program.

But perhaps the declining, near-live linear TV needs a bit of juicing. What if a late-night TV talk show -- every now and then -- schedules both candidates' appearances at the same time by a late-night host?

I'm thinking this would be part debate and part comedy team bit/part TV network "roast" -- the latter of which always seems to offer up some ribald humor coming from hints of imbibing special drinks.

If the FCC is looking to perhaps loosen up TV over the air rule making, somewhat wilder late-night entertainment would result.
So everyone wins -- bipartisan-ly!