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NBC Forced To Give President Trump Free Airtime During Sunday Night Football & NASCAR Race

I knew it the moment I saw the first reports coming in that Kamala’s plane had been “diverted”, and word started to spread that she would be making a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live.

I knew NBC would pay a price for that sneaky last-minute play — and that’s just what happened.  Check this out!

I have a feeling that’s not what the Kamala-Walz campaign bargained for.  Campaign ads during enormously popular sporting events like Sunday Night Football and NASCAR races are crazy expensive!  But not this 90-second ad; thanks to the “generosity” of NBC (and the apparent threat of FCC action) this one was free!

The fact that NBC was forced to allow President Trump to air “A special message from Donald J. Trump” while he’s wearing a red MAGA hat, as Fox News reports, might truly be ample payback for NBC’s underhanded attempted at giving Kamala some sort of last-minute edge in viewership.

An election ad for former President Donald Trump aired on NBC toward the end of the broadcast of NASCAR’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway and the NFL’s coverage of the Minnesota Vikings-Indianapolis Colts game on Sunday night.

The ad started with “A special message from Donald J. Trump.”

Trump was seen with his “Make America Great Again” hat as he told viewers that electing Vice President Kamala Harris would bring along another “depression.” He also told viewers to go out and vote with only a handful of hours left before Election Day comes and goes.

“We’re losing everything, including viability,” Trump said in the ad. “We’re going to end up in a depression based on what’s been happening. We’ve never seen anything like it, at least in the last 40 years.”

The appearance of the Republican presidential candidate appeared to be connected to Harris’ surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” according to multiple reports.

In fact, the FCC received an “Equal Time Notice” filed late Sunday from NBC, officially disclosing Kamala’s SNL appearance according to that same Fox News story.

The uproar over her appearance and whether Trump would get free time on some NBC broadcast was the talk of Sunday.

NBC News filed an Equal Time notice with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) late Sunday following the backlash, disclosing Harris “SNL” appearance after the network was accused of violating the longstanding rule.

The notice came after commissioner Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the FCC, lambasted NBC’s decision to host Harris in the final episode of SNL ahead of Election Day, while not offering equal time to former President Trump or other candidates in the presidential cycle.

“This has all the appearances of, at least some leadership at NBC, at SNL, making clear that they wanted to weigh-in in favor of one candidate before the election. That’s exactly why, for decades, we’ve had an equal time rule on the book, is to prevent that. Because remember, broadcasters are placed in a special position of trust. They’re not just like any other person with a soapbox on the corner. They have a license from the federal government that obligates them to operate in the public interest,” Carr told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview Sunday morning.

The NBC filing later Sunday confirms that the network “views the Harris SNL appearance as a free use of their facilities and airwaves within the meaning of the federal Equal Time rule,” Carr told Fox News Digital later Sunday, highlighting the limited timeframe Trump and others have in this case to take the network up on its offer.

One issue that still hangs in the air is the discrepancy between Kamala’s “free” airtime and that afforded to President Trump.  It remains to be seen if Kamala’s 90 second skit has been fully equated by the 60 second ad that President Trump was able to air.  He has reportedly been given 90 seconds of equal airtime — does that presume another 30 second ad to come?

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That was Kamala’s “free airtime”, verses President Trump’s “free airtime”.

The New York Post is asking the same question I did — where’s President Trump’s remaining 30 seconds he is owed?

Harris appeared on the sketch-comedy shot with 1 minute and 30 seconds.

It’s unclear if Trump would make appear in another spot across the network’s broadcasts up until Election Day.

The Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule was established in 1934 and requires radio and television broadcast stations to provide the same amount of time for competing political candidates.

There are exceptions to the rule such as newscasts, documentaries and political debates.

Considering this does not qualify as one of the exceptions to the equal-time rule, I ask again — where is the 30 seconds owed to President Trump?  Is it to much to ask that President Trump’s remaining 30 seconds is allowed to interrupt coverage of a Kamala campaign event?  (I think I just went from news writing to meddling… but, still!)

At any rate, I’m surprised to see the FCC push back so swiftly and NBC crater so easily.  A sign of things to come?  Possibly.  One can pray; and this one certainly will be doing a lot of that over the next few days.  Maybe the days of left-leaning injustices in the media are coming to an end?  Then again, we might need to keep praying on that one.


 

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