Why That Kamala Harris Saturday Night Live Appearance Triggered an FCC Response

As the 2024 presidential race nears the finish line, the battle for equal time on one of TV’s top networks rages on. In its final episode before election day, Saturday Night Live opened with a surprise appearance by Kamala Harris, who engaged in a moment of reflection with her onscreen counterpart Maya Rudolph. But that “Keep Kamala and Carry On-ala” guest appearance was met with swift backlash by FCC regulator Brendan Carr, a Republican who wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the SNL cold open “is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”

Carr, who was nominated by then president Donald Trump and renominated to the five-member commission by President Joe Biden, wrote in a follow-up message that SNL purposefully structured Harris’s cameo “just hours before an election” in a manner that denied “all other candidates their one week procedural right” to “request their Equal Time from the broadcast station.” Vanity Fair has reached out to reps at the FCC and NBC for comment.

Did NBC file Harris’s SNL appearance with the FCC?

Yes. As Carr acknowledged on X, NBC filed an “Equal Time” notice with the agency, noting that Harris appeared for 90 seconds “without charge” on SNL. The network also filed a notice regarding Democratic senator Tim Kaine’s appearance in a quiz-show sketch, which revolved around a contestant played by host John Mulaney who could not remember the name of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate. Kaine, who is currently running for reelection against Republican Hung Cao in Virginia, appeared for 1 minute and 55 seconds “without charge.”

As a reminder, FCC equal time rules, as established by the Communications Act of 1934, require broadcasters to provide “comparable time and placement to opposing candidates” ahead of an election. Coverage is not required to be identical, and news events are exempt from this guideline. The FCC does not mandate that a network approach opposing campaigns to offer equal time—candidates must request it.

Has the Trump campaign requested equal time on the network?

Trump, who already publicly shamed SNL for what he alleges to be past FCC violations, has indicated in a campaign video that he would potentially exercise more control over the FCC, which is overseen by Congress, in a second presidential term. During the 2024 presidential election, he has already exerted pressure on the FCC to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC and CBS.

In the hours after Harris briefly joined SNL, the Trump campaign criticized the Democratic presidential candidate, telling Fox News that “she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity.”

But Jonathan S. Uriarte, the commission’s director of strategic communications/policy advisor, wrote in a statement to Entertainment Weekly that the FCC has not “received a complaint from any interested parties” regarding the appearance, adding that Carr’s remarks “do not represent those of the agency.”

NBC declined to make a statement to the publication—but during Sunday’s broadcast of a NASCAR race and an NFL game, the network twice aired a 90-second Trump ad in which Trump claims electing Harris would cause a “depression.” This amounted to 120 seconds of commercial time on NBC, roughly the same amount as Harris’s SNL guest spot. A source familiar with the situation told The Hollywood Reporter that the airing of the ad was “connected to NBC giving the Trump campaign equal time.”

What is Saturday Night Live’s history of spotlighting political candidates?

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Saturday Night Live head Lorne Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this fall, adding: “You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”But this isn’t the first time the sketch-comedy series has invited a candidate to appear on the program during a presidential race.

A week before the 2008 election, then-Republican candidate for president John McCain appeared on SNL, following an earlier appearance by his then-running mate, Sarah Palin. Democratic candidate Barack Obama did not request equal time, and later won the presidency. Fellow Democratic presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton also appeared on the show following Trump’s controversial 2015 turn as host during the Republican primary. In the years since, multiple SNL cast members have come out against the decision to let Trump host, with Taran Killam calling Trump’s hosting stint “embarrassing and shameful” and current Weekend Update host Colin Jost comparing Trump’s appearance to “a confederate statue.”