Talarico’s Jimmy Kimmel interview racks up nearly 6M views on YouTube – USA Today

Sept. 12, 2026, 10:07 a.m. ET Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico skipped television and went straight to YouTube — quickly racking up nearly 6 million views. The interview, posted to the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” YouTube channel on Sept. 10, had garnered about 5.8 million views by early morning Sept. 12, making it one of the show’s standout recent uploads. Kimmel said he chose not to air the interview on ABC amid concerns about Federal Communications Commission rules governing appearances by political candidates. Instead, the late-night host uploaded his conversation with Talarico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, to YouTube. During the Talarico interview, Kimmel noted that the Texas Democrat encountered a similar situation earlier this year. Talarico’s February interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” was released on YouTube rather than broadcast on CBS. At the time, Colbert said the network’s lawyers had raised concerns that airing the interview could trigger the FCC’s equal-opportunities rule for political candidates. Under federal law, broadcast stations that allow a legally qualified political candidate to use their facilities generally must provide comparable opportunities to opposing candidates, although certain bona fide news programming is exempt. In a
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