Updated at 2:40pm Eastern
With less than four days before voters in the U.S. head to the polls, the Democratic nominee for President — Kamala Harris — appeared as a mirror image of Maya Rudolph’s character impression of her on a live episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
The appearance by the candidate riled the senior Republican-aligned Commissioner at the FCC, who took to the X social media platform to blast the network for “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”
Did Sunday appearances from former and hopeful future President Trump resolve the matter?
Reacting to a report from Associated Press about Harris’ appearance on SNL shared just two hours before air time, Carr explained that the purpose of the FCC’s Equal Time rule “is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct — a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.”
That is, of course, unless the broadcaster offered equal time to other qualifying campaigns.
Federal law requires that broadcasters provide comparable time and placement to all legally qualified candidates when the Equal Time rule is triggered. Did that happen on SNL?
“With only days before the election, NBC appears to have structured this appearance in a way that evades these requirements,” Carr said on X. “What comparable time and placement can they offer all other qualifying candidates?”
To bolster his statement, he offered a snapshot of the FCC Political Programming Rules Fact Sheet.
Carr also looked at precedent. “In the 2016 cycle, ‘President Obama’s FCC Chair’ [Tom Wheeler] made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on SNL,” he commented. “NBC stations publicly filed Equal Opportunity notices to ensure that all other qualifying candidates could obtain Equal Time if they sought it. Stations did the same thing when [then-President Bill] Clinton appeared on SNL.”
On the weekend of November 7, 2015, nearly one year before he was elected, then-candidate Donald Trump, a former NBC star thanks to “The Apprentice,” appeared for 12 minutes and five seconds on SNL. NBC affiliate WTWO-2 in Terre Haute, Ind., filed a notice with the FCC for Trump’s no-charge appearance.
What is perhaps particularly irksome to Carr is that SNL producer Lorne Michaels in early October insisted that there would be no cameos of Trump or Harris this season precisely due to Equal Time provisions.
Some 19 hours after Carr began his flurry of posts on X, NBC responded. At 4:15pm on Sunday, he acknowledged the filing by NBC Local of a notice confirming that NBC provided free airtime to Harris within the meaning of the FCC’s Equal Time rule.
Harris appeared for 90 seconds.
Less than two hours later, Carr offered another point of concern to his followers on X.
“There’s another complicating factor here given that NBC’s SNL initially said that no candidates would appear on [the show because] of the federal Equal Time rule,” he wrote. “Since SNL made a secret 180 only 50 hours or so before election day, their decision runs into the seven-day rule component of the Equal Time statute.”
The FCC’s seven-day rule affords qualifying candidates one week to request their Equal Time from the broadcast station. The Commission adopted this rule to, in Carr’s words, “avoid gamesmanship by candidates” and for orderly planning for a broadcaster.
The one week right before an election also allows the candidate seeking the Equal Time an opportunity to plan for their use of the time that the law affords them. The rule does not require candidates to choose between a snap response or none at all. “Nonetheless, NBC structured the SNL candidate appearance (just hours before an election) in a way that denies all other candidates their one week procedural right,” Carr said.
Perhaps to diffuse the situation, NBC gave former President Trump a free window to speak to viewers on Sunday — with a short appearance tied to the network’s NASCAR coverage. The message appeared at the end of the telecast, the Hollywood Reporter notes. It featured the Republican candidate seeking a return to the White House speaking directly to the camera. Then, during post-game coverage of Sunday Night Football, Trump was given an additional 60 seconds.
Meanwhile, Preston Padden, the former FOX and ABC executive who is working with the Media and Democracy Project in a quest to have the FCC deny the license renewal of WTXF-29 in Philadelphia on the grounds that it aired false and misleading news during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle, has taken to X to refute Carr.
“I believe to be a violation of Equal Time, the opposing candidate must request time and be denied,” Padden said. “I am unaware of any evidence that Trump requested time and was denied.”
That post was seen by former FCC Chair Reed Hundt, who agreed with Padden. “I was FCC Chair,” Hundt said on X. “Brendan Carr is wrong. He’s clearly and blatantly trying to help Trump campaign. That’s also wrong.”
