‘The View,’ Other Late-Night Shows to Be Affected by FCC’s New Guidance

Amanda Bell January 21, 2026, 3:48 pm

What To Know

The FCC has issued new guidance challenging the automatic classification of late-night and daytime talk shows.
If The View is not granted this exemption, it would be required to provide equal airtime to political candidates from opposing parties.

The Federal Communications Commission has issued new guidance about the requirement for compliance with its equal time rule, and it seems to follow through on a promise made by Commissioner Brendan Carr in relation to The View.

Back in September 2025, after his public pressure against ABC and its affiliates led to the (ultimately temporary) suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Carr took a victory lap on certain podcasts, and when asked whether he would go after the daytime talk show, which many conservatives perceive as being too anti-Donald Trump, he outlined his plan.

“Over the years, the FCC has developed a body of case law … and has suggested that most of these late-night shows, other than SNL, are bona fide news programs. And, potentially, I would assume you can make the argument that The View is a bona fide news show, but I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View [and others] that you still have qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equality opportunity regime that Congress has put into place,” he said.

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Indeed, in Wednesday’s new guidance, the FCC specifically discounts the presumption that other late-night and daytime talk shows are automatically qualified as “bona fide news” just because a 2006 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was ruled to qualify.

While the new guidance does not mention The View or other late-night programs by name — and it also doesn’t specifically discount that they will qualify for this exception, but rather says that “a program that is motivated by partisan purposes… would not be entitled to an exemption” — the issuance does align with the plan he specifically mentioned to target The View.

So how might the show be affected by this? Well, if it is not found by the FCC to be exempt from the equal time rule, that means it would have to feature political candidates of opposite parties in equal measure, which could prove to be a major problem for the show’s bookers. In the past, the cohosts have indicated that Republican guests have not wanted to come onto the show, despite inviting them to do so.

A study found that in 2025, the show cohosts interviewed 128 liberal-leaning guests in 2025, including 25 Democratic politicians, versus two conservative guests.

The View, weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC