It’s hard to imagine that one of the animating issues in the final days of the 2024 presidential campaign would be a decades-old regulation enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). But that makes this the perfect time to talk about abolishing the equal time rule.

That Reason reported last monthRandall Terry of the Constitution Party used his presidential campaign to implement FCC regulations and force broadcasters to air his anti-abortion ads. Under “the requirement of equality of opportunity“—a federal regulation more commonly called the equal time rule—if a candidate for public office appears on a licensed broadcast station, the station must “allow equal opportunity” to all other candidates for the same office, with exceptions for “bona fide” coverage of news.

Although Terry does not appear to be really competing for votes, his status as a “legally qualified candidate” has ensured that licensed broadcasters must air his ads as long as he can pay the same rate as the other candidates and that the broadcasters “will have no power of censorship over the broadcast material”.

Close to Election Day, another equally timely controversy reared its head when Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, made a cameo appearance on the Nov. 2 episode of NBC Saturday Night Live.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s equal time rule,” said Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. posted on X. “The purpose of the rule is to prevent exactly this type of biased and partisan behavior — a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert influence over a candidate on the eve of an election.”

As Carr notes, the FCC problems broadcasting licenses that allow TV and radio stations to broadcast on certain public frequencies. “In return for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcasting station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate his station in the ‘public interest, convenience and necessity'” says the FCC. “Station licensees, as stewards of the public airwaves, must use the broadcast medium to serve the public interest.”

Only NBC has TENS of affiliated local stations. FCC regulate affiliates, not the networks themselves or cable channels: affiliates broadcast networks’ content, and cable does not broadcast over the public airwaves.

Sunday afternoon, Carr posted an FCC filing in which NBC admitted that Harris “appeared without charge” on Saturday Night Live “for a total period of 1:30 (one minute and 30 seconds).” Theoretically, then, all other “legally qualified” presidential candidates could be entitled to 90 seconds of free NBC airtime. (To compensate, NBC aired a 60-second ad for former President Donald Trump twice on Sunday, once during NASCAR coverage and again during Sunday night football.)

SNL also broadcast a sketching later on Saturday‘His show, in which a game show contestant proclaims 2024 “the most important election in American history” where “democracy is on the line” — and then, despite saying the exact same thing about the 2016 election, endeavor to identify the senator. Tim Kaine (D–Va.), the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016.

The senator appeared in the sketch as himself, but is also running for re-election, facing off another potential equal time violation. Carr posted another FCC filing on Sunday night, in which NBC acknowledged that Kaine “appeared without charge” on the show “for a total of 1:55 (one minute and 55 seconds).” NBC then agreed to broadcast four of Republican challenger Hung Cao’s ads during his Monday night prime-time shows in Virginia, totaling two minutes of free airtime.

Carr said On Monday, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo says “we have to keep every remedy on the table” to address such potential violations, up to “revocation of the license if we find it’s serious.”

On the contrary, all this scattering should provide all the evidence we need that the rule of equal time, as The doctrine of correctness before him, it should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Equal time rule come in the Communications Act of 1934 and has been amended at various times since then. Like radio stations, the major TV networks have come under additional scrutiny because of the government-enforced oligopoly they effectively hold over their particular forms of broadcasting. Similar requirements for non-broadcast media were held unconstitutional: In 1974 Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. TornilloUS Supreme Court overturned unanimously a Florida statute requiring publishers to print a response to any political or personal editorial criticism. “The clear implication was that any such compulsion to publish what ‘reason tells them should not be published’ is unconstitutional,” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote.

Today, broadcast networks no longer have any influence over what people can watch. Last year, according to Nielsen, the combined share of TV viewers that occurred in over-the-air or cable broadcasts fell below 50 percent for the first time as streaming skyrocketed. Only 20% took place on conventional television, meaning that 80% of all TV viewers were not subjected to any FCC content regulation, let alone equal time rules.

In practice, equal time rules create onerous requirements, as broadcasters are forced to account for every second a candidate is on screen and give equal time to any other contestants who request it. But the rules are enforced with little apparent internal logic. When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his campaign for governor The Tonight Show in 2003, for example, Democratic candidate Phil Angelides called for equal time. “We believe that the news interview portions of ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ meet the exemption criteria as bona fide news interview,” later FCC determinedand Angelides’ request was rejected.

Saturday Night Live has faced this problem before. trump card hosted an entire episode in October 2015. Multiple Republican primary challengers then requested airtime equal to the 12 minutes Trump spent on screen during his hosting gig; The New York Times reported in November 2015 that NBC had agreed to give free airtime to John Kasich, James Gilmore, Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee while George Pataki was still negotiating the terms. Given that of those participants, only Kasich’s campaign survived until Super Tuesday, the equal time rule clearly made little difference.

Similarly, Al Sharpton hosted the show in December 2003 while running for the Democratic primary. All four NBC affiliates in Iowa refused to air the episode due to fears of equal time rules. Democratic challenger Joe Lieberman’s campaign called for equal airtime in certain markets, leading stations in Missouri and California to reair a Lieberman town hall.

When the equal time rule was developed, a much more limited number of frequencies were available across the broadcast spectrum. But that world no longer exists. We’ve gotten to the point where almost 17% of American adults get their news from TikTok.

The equal time rule imposes burdens on a group of broadcasters, exempting their cable or streaming competitors. Any public benefit that its drafters intended is largely non-existent. Let’s abolish it before the next election cycle begins.