From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, February 19th.

You know, who is not one of my guests tonight? That's Texas State Representative James Tala Rico. He was supposed

to be here, but we were told

in no uncertain terms by our network's

lawyers, who called us directly,

that we could not have him on the

broadcast. Then

I was told, in some

uncertain terms, that not only could

I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on.

And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this.

And that Stephen Colbert clip is where we pick up.

Scott Nover of The Washington Post is here to explain what

exactly the FCC did, what CBS did, what the law actually is, and what it means for the rest of this

election. Scott Nover, media reporter for the Washington Post joins us. Scott, welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate it.

So walk us through first, Colbert's allegations against CBS and the FCC.

Why wasn't he allowed to air his interview with James Talarico on network television, according to him?

And then tell us what the actual law is.

Yeah.

So I think it's important to note that Colbert's allegation is mostly against CBS.

He went on air on Monday night and said that, as you heard in the clip, CBS's lawyers called him and blocked him from airing an interview that he had recorded with Tala Rico and said that they couldn't have him on the

...