Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview With James Talarico Heading to YouTube to Avoid FCC Hassle
Jimmy Kimmel‘s planned Thursday interview with James Talarico will not be aired on the ABC broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and will instead stream on the late-night show’s YouTube channel.
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Kimmel made the announcement during his monologue on Wednesday’s episode of his late-night show. Discussing the Texas Senate race, Kimmel said that he would interview Democratic candidate Talarico on Thursday “under unusual circumstances,” and then alluded to ABC’s ongoing issues with the Federal Communications Commission.
“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 Hilary 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.”
“Now that [Trump is] president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates [and] our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings, it would seem, [that] they don’t like,” Kimmel added, referring to ABC’s ongoing battle with the FCC and in particular with the agency’s chair Brendan Carr.
In September 2025, in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Carr condemned Kimmel for comments he made during one of his monologues about Kirk’s death, and the FCC chair intimated that regulatory action or license reviews for ABC affiliates could happen if Kimmel wasn’t made to apologize. After Kimmel was temporarily suspended over the matter, a firestorm engulfed ABC’s owner, Disney. Kimmel became a cause celebre in Hollywood and he was eventually reinstated but that didn’t stop the FCC from continuing to target ABC, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the daytime talk show The View over claims they didn’t meet the agency’s equal time requirements. In August this year, ABC said it was suing the FCC over the agency’s efforts to challenge its broadcast licenses and the content of The View, saying that it is a free speech violation by the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Kimmel confessed that ABC’s ongoing issues with the FCC meant that the Talarico interview would instead air online. “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 Terico will not air on television. It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV. So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! YouTube channel, where you will see it in its entirety. And thank goodness we have that because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November.”
This isn’t the first time an interview with Talarico has caused such consternation on late-night television. In February, Stephen Colbert, the host of the now-ended Late Show, revealed on air that lawyers for CBS blocked him from interviewing Talarico on broadcast, citing the FCC’s new guidance for political candidates on talk shows. The Late Show ran the Talarico interview on its YouTube channel, where it has been viewed 9.5 million times.
