By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will testify on December 17 before the Senate Commerce Committee after he faced bipartisan criticism for pressuring broadcasters to take ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off air.
Senator Ted Cruz, the committee chair, announced the oversight hearing late on Friday, which will also include commissioners Olivia Trusty and Anna Gomez.
Carr did not immediately comment.
Kimmel drew fire from the White House and others for remarks he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, prompting condemnation from Carr who urged local broadcasters to stop airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC.
In September, Cruz sharply criticized Carr days after he threatened the licenses of Disney and local broadcasters who aired Kimmel’s show after the FCC chair said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Cruz said the comments were “dangerous as hell.”
“I got to say that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas’,” Cruz said, evoking the Martin Scorsese gangster movie. “That’s right out of a Mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.'”
Cruz had said that Carr’s threats could one day hurt conservative media outlets if employed by a future Democratic administration.
Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group both quickly ended a boycott of the Kimmel show on their 70 ABC-affiliated stations covering nearly a quarter of U.S. households.
Carr will also face questions from Democrats about the FCC’s pressure on other broadcasters.
In July, the FCC approved the $8.4 billion merger between CBS parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media after Skydance agreed to ensure CBS news and entertainment programming is free of bias, and to hire an ombudsman for at least two years to review complaints and end diversity programs.
In January, Carr reinstated complaints about a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris, how ABC News moderated the pre-election televised debate between then-President Joe Biden and Trump and Comcast-owned NBC for allowing Harris to appear on “Saturday Night Live” shortly before the election.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Diane Craft)
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