Equal Time, Unequal Courage: CBS Panics, Senate Dems Posture, and the FCC Holds the Remote

I smelled it before I heard it: that hot electrical tang of studio panic, like someone dropped a fork in the fryer and called it “standards.” Nothing makes a corporate legal department sweat faster than a federal regulator clearing his throat and tapping the rulebook.

Blumenthal demands records after CBS balks at airing the Colbert interview

This story is not really about a comedian, or a Texas Democrat, or the sacred late-night monologue. It is about who gets to own the switchboard when speech becomes a bargaining chip.

On February 23, 2026, Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison demanding records and information about why Stephen Colbert’s planned interview with Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico did not air on CBS broadcast. He also asked what communications Paramount had with the FCC or the White House about it, and he set a response deadline of March 6, 2026. Translation: Washington wants receipts.

The FCC dusted off Section 315 and network lawyers reached for the fainting couch

The actual meat on the grill is the FCC’s reminder about the statutory equal opportunities requirement for broadcast television. The FCC’s Media Bureau issued a public notice on January 21, 2026 (DA 26-68) about Section 315. If a broadcast station lets one legally qualified candidate “use” its airwaves, it has to provide equal opportunity to the other legally qualified candidates for that office.

The notice also pushes back on the cozy assumption that late-night and daytime talk shows automatically qualify for a bona fide news interview exemption. It says exemptions are fact specific, states the FCC has not been presented with evidence that the interview portion of any current late-night or daytime talk show would qualify, and warns that programming motivated by partisan purposes would not be entitled to an exemption.

So the interview went to YouTube, where the FCC does not patrol the door

Colbert said his show was told not to air the interview on CBS broadcast out of fear of triggering the FCC rule. CBS said it did not prohibit airing it, but provided legal guidance that it could create equal-opportunities obligations and offered compliance options. The practical worry was straightforward: air one candidate, and you may have to offer comparable time to others.

Then came the modern workaround: the segment was posted to YouTube instead of airing on broadcast, because YouTube is not a broadcast licensee.

Blumenthal smells a favor economy and wants to know who blinked

Blumenthal frames the episode as censorship and questions whether Paramount would silence content to curry favor while pursuing corporate deals that may face regulatory scrutiny. He asks who decided to comply with the FCC’s posture instead of challenging it, and he wants the communications trail. In plain English: who called who, who flinched, and what was the trade?

What it means: speech by permission, courage by subcontract

This is the American circus in one ring: regulators can shape behavior without writing a ticket, and corporate counsel can self-censor without admitting it. Meanwhile, politicians who cheered censorship in other contexts suddenly discover a First Amendment spine when the squeeze hits their side. If the emails exist, let them come out. Just stop pretending the only censorship that matters is the kind that inconveniences a celebrity on TV.