David Folkenflik

Senate seat from Texas this year equal time on the show.

And that said, CBS came out the next day and said, no, no, we just gave him advice and said this is what his show would have to do in that context if they were to do that.

We tried to advise him.

And Colbert that very night came forward once more and said, absolute baloney.

That's not what this network said.

The

that I couldn't do this, even though I don't really want to get in a spat with my own network on this.

And so it all was this argument over who was enforcing an adherence to a particular interpretation of the equal time rule.

Well, it's not exactly the first time, but the equal time rule is this.

Now, there is.

exception to this for news divisions or news reports.

And there have been exemptions given to late night talk shows and chat shows.

They're seen basically as news adjacent.

And that is if something is newsworthy, federal government gets a little more nervous about interfering and saying, well, you can't interview the

this person or can't interview that.

But this is the idea behind it.

Yes and no.

Carr said in January that he was thinking about making changes to that exemption for the late night talk shows.

And if we recall, last fall, he essentially, you know, did an impression of a mafioso, as Senator Ted Cruz put it, by saying we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.

After Jimmy Kimmel made some remarks that offended the president's supporters in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk.