What the SNL ‘Equal Time’ Drama Was Really About

It would have been an asterisk in the history of the 2024 presidential election had Kamala Harris won, but last weekend’s “equal time” micro-scandal over her SNL cameo now feels like a warning about what’s to come under the second Donald Trump administration. In case you missed it, Trump-appointed FCC commissioner (and Project 2025 co-author) Brendan Carr tried to whip up some outrage over the fact that NBC allowed Harris to appear on SNL three days before the election, falsely inferring that the network was giving her an unfair advantage over Donald Trump and thus violating an FCC regulation that says broadcast stations can’t play favorites with candidates. It was b.s., of course — but Carr didn’t care.

For the 99.9 percent of you who are not up to speed on the ins and outs of FCC regulations, basically what the equal-time rule says is that if a licensed broadcaster gives a political candidate airtime during an election season, it has to give all of their opponents the chance to request a comparable amount of airtime. They do this by giving public notice that there’s been a triggering of the equal-time rule; candidates who believe they have a claim then have seven days to request a similar amount of airtime. Importantly, the broadcaster doesn’t have to seek out candidates or even notify them specifically they might be entitled to time: It’s on the campaign to keep up on the public notices and act accordingly. What’s more, this rule does not generally apply to news coverage (because it would be impossible to keep score), nor does it cover cable networks or social-media platforms or streamers like Netflix or YouTube, because the FCC doesn’t have the same jurisdiction over those mediums as it does over-the-air channels. It’s basically for entertainment programming that runs on over-the-air TV stations, either locally or nationally.

Anyway, the equal-time rule doesn’t exist to keep candidates from stopping by SNL or doing a waltz on Dancing With the Stars. It’s just there so that if a broadcaster chooses to give a politician such a showcase, they have to be prepared to give their opponents a similar showcase. And guess what: That’s exactly what happened here. Within hours of Harris popping up with Maya Rudolph on SNL, NBC gave the Trump campaign two free minutes of airtime on Sunday Night Football and NASCAR, letting him reach millions more live viewers than Harris did and with a message that his campaign — and not SNL’s scribes — penned. In terms of direct exposure to viewers on NBC, Trump arguably got the better end of the deal, since SNL reaches a fraction of the live audience of an NFL game. No rules were violated, no laws were broken, and normally that would be the end of it.

But of course, Carr, savvy suck-up to Trump that he is, decided to attack NBC anyway. Even before Harris appeared on SNL, Mr. Project 2025 popped up on Occupied Twitter to frame her rumored appearance as “clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” labeling it “biased and partisan conduct” and hinting it could be a case of NBC’s stations “using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.” He, of course, knew that wasn’t the case, because there was actual precedent for what happened this weekend. The Saturday before the 2008 election, Senator John McCain, then the Republican nominee for president running against Barack Obama, made not one but two appearances on SNL, both in the cold open and “Weekend Update.” And you know what the response was? Pretty much crickets. In fact, Obama used his closing rallies to praise McCain as “funny.” And as far as I can tell, Obama didn’t even bother asking for equal time.

And yet, while NBC stations — which are the ones licensed by the FCC, rather than the network itself — had made good on their equal-time obligations to Trump within 24 hours, on Monday morning, Carr was on live with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, threatening to pull the licenses of NBC stations. “One of the remedies ultimately would be license revocation if we find that it’s egregious,” Carr declared. I have no idea if Carr knew that NBC had already fulfilled its obligations under the equal-time rule when he made those comments, but as a sitting member of the FCC, he should have known that. But of course, Carr wasn’t interested in fulfilling his role as a watchdog ensuring fairness on the public airwaves. He was just trying to help gin up outrage at NBC and the Harris campaign and demonstrate his effectiveness as a lapdog for Donald Trump. He will probably be richly rewarded in the new Trump White House.

But putting aside Carr’s actions, all of this does raise the question of whether the equal-time rule has outlived its usefulness. As the Verge’s Nilay Patel rightly noted a few days ago, current FCC regulations were born during a time when broadcast TV overwhelmingly dominated the media environment and the major networks’ entertainment shows would regularly reach 20 or 30 percent of TV viewers every night. That hasn’t been the case for decades. And while network shows still can reach millions of people, social-media networks and Netflix and YouTube do that as well. Candidates can even set up their own social-media networks to reach voters directly, or ally themselves with billionaire owners who can turn their social networks into promotional tools for their preferred candidates, the way Musk did this season. None of this is regulated by the FCC, which makes it all the more ridiculous that ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox stations have to adhere to much tighter rules — all at a time when they’re struggling to even remain financially stable.

In a perfect world, there would be some logic to getting rid of the equal-time rule, and, quite frankly, the same FCC regulations that force networks to censor four-letter words that are ubiquitous on virtually every other form of media. Yes, over-the-air broadcast networks use “public” airwaves, but more people these days have internet access than have the digital antenna needed to pull in broadcast signals. And sadly, while the major networks still do a decent job of reaching millions of people in real time, they’re just nowhere near as influential as they were when the FCC began overseeing them. Micromanaging a cameo on a TV show that on a good night reaches fewer than 6 million viewers feels like a reach, particularly when candidates have so many other ways to reach voters.

The only reason I pause before advocating for repealing these rules is that with bad actors like Musk using their platforms to distort and twist the public conversation to their preferred narratives, there is some utility in keeping in place regulations on at least one form of major media. After all, while Rupert Murdoch has always been careful to not let his Fox broadcast network look anything like Fox News, who knows how that might change were Fox-owned stations and affiliates suddenly able to operate without any oversight. What’s more, as outdated as the equal-time rule might be, it generally hasn’t hurt broadcasters, financially or otherwise. And with Trump soon to be back in charge, maybe we actually need all the guardrails we have, however outdated they might seem.

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