It might get trickier for talk shows to book political figures as guests. The FCC’s Media Bureau said Wednesday that talk shows will no longer automatically be treated as news programming, which is exempt from the agency’s political equal time rule. That rule requires broadcast stations to provide comparable time and placement to opposing candidates, regardless of party. Late-night talk shows have been considered exempt since 1996, when the FCC ruled that an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger on “The Tonight Show” qualified as news. In new guidance, however, the FCC said it “has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late-night or daytime television talk show currently on the air would qualify for the bona fide news exemption.” Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, criticized the move as “an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
AI is grabbing the headlines, but as 2026 begins, marketers are doubling down on digital media investment – under growing pressure to translate the AI hype into real-world results, per Mediaocean’s 2026 Advertising Outlook Report. Takeaways include: · While 43% of marketers are using AI for data analysis and 43% for market research, adoption drops as AI moves closer to execution, with 33% using AI for creative development and only 19% for campaign orchestration. · Media investment is rebounding selectively, with planned spend increases concentrated in CTV and digital video (63% respectively), social platforms (61%), and AI-driven media/ads on AI agents (54%), while traditional channels such as print and linear TV continue to face pressure. · As marketers shift from AI experimentation to execution, data quality or access issues (42%) and difficulty connecting AI insights across systems (41%) are cited as the biggest barriers to scaling AI effectively….
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