CBS Pulls Politician Interview but Lets YouTube Be Free Speech Disneyland

KEY POINTS

•Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers blocked a scheduled Monday night interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico due to FCC regulations.
•The interview was uploaded to YouTube instead, where it gained over 2 million views, beating normal audience numbers by a wide margin.
•The FCC’s ‘equal time’ rule and legal risks around other candidates led CBS to withhold the interview from broadcast but not online.

On a modern-day episode of 'You Can’t Say That on Broadcast TV,' Stephen Colbert revealed CBS yanked Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico’s interview due to the dread FCC 'equal time' rule—basically the TV world’s 'no fair!' Children’s playground creed but with senators. Lawyers gloated, lawyers intervened, and Colbert wasn’t even allowed to say why on air, turning his monologue into an Orwellian sneeze. So CBS dumped Talarico straight to YouTube, where it instantly grabbed 2 million clicks, crushing the usual 75k-510k views and making Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl hype look meek. All this amid CBS canceling Colbert’s show in May 2026 alongside simmering lawsuits, media mergers, and FCC probes, proving that when government meets networks, the result is political slapstick gold.