Just how much legal trouble would NBC have had over Saturday Night Live's promotion of Kamala Harris this weekend? David wrote about his skepticism this morning, and I literally laughed out loud when someone suggested to me that there could be a significant penalty.

Perhaps both of us were a little too skeptical. NBC seems to have worried about it enough to give Donald Trump not one but two slots yesterday to promote his campaign, both during major sports events:

On Sunday, NBC broadcast a NASCAR playoff race, but some viewers noticed toward the end of the broadcast (technically right after the race ended but while coverage was still ongoing) that Trump appeared in an unusual ad, speaking directly to camera while wearing a Red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and claiming that electing Harris would cause a “depression” and that viewers should “go and vote.”

A source familiar with the matter says that the spot during the NASCAR race was connected to NBC giving the Trump campaign equal time.

Trump was given 60 additional seconds of campaign time during NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage. While the game was already over, the spot — which was the same one that aired during the NASCAR coverage — aired during the post-game coverage (and shortly after a paid campaign ad). That’s a total of 120 seconds.

Here's the spot, which looks more spontaneous than the SNL skit did for Harris:

🚨BREAKING: NBC forced to allow Trump to air a free 90 second advertisement during Sunday Night Football and NASCAR per FCC regulations in order to provide equal time to Kamala Harris’ SNL appearance.

pic.twitter.com/OhKlWoVno7

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 4, 2024

The choice of spot seems a bit curious to me. The campaign has created several well-tuned ads recently, one in particular hammering on the status quo and promising to "fight" to restore America. Why not run one of those? Trump and his team may have wanted to match Harris' live presentation quality for the impact of immediacy, but that leaves this sounding a little undisciplined. Trump's stream-of-consciousness style plays much better in longer forms, such as rallies and podcasts, rather than 60-second spots for national TV advertising. 

Was it effective? One has to suspect that NBC took the requirement for "equal impact" more seriously and more literally than expected. Harris cackled to the choir on SNL, whose audience skews so heavily progressive-urban that it's practically San Francisco. NASCAR audiences likely skew heavily conservative/Republican too, although the NFL has a more politically diverse audience. The spot aired after the Vikings beat the Colts in a yawner, so the audience probably got down to the same level as, say, an SNL episode.

Why did NBC back down? They certainly weren't worried about their broadcast license; the government isn't going to deplatform NBC, nor should we cheer for establishing that kind of precedent at the FCC. Just imagine what they would do with Fox or any other dissenting broadcast org if progressives really seize power at some point, with that as a precedent. At worst, it might involve a fine amounting to somewhere around 0.00013% of Comcast's net profit margin in any given year. 

That assumes that the FCC or the FEC would take legal action at all. Theoretically, they could pursue violations of the Equal Time rule (FCC), or the appearance of an in-kind campaign contribution arguably worth seven figures (FEC). Neither commission has a habit of bold enforcement actions even where violations are obvious. The idea that NBC got frightened enough of legal action to offer these spots to Trump is much more laughable than anything SNL has produced in ... well, decades, really.

My suspicion is that NBC execs are looking at the same Gallup poll that has Jeff Bezos changing directions at the Washington Post. They have a big night coming up tomorrow, and they want as much of the audience as they can get. Allowing that Harris spot on SNL to go unrebutted would underscore their corporate bias against Trump and his supporters, which would then mean their broadcast audience might not get much larger that the draw for MSNBC, their cable home for shrieking progressives. It's relatively cheap to offer Trump two sixty-second spots to bury this contretemps before Election Night. Better to patch over the credibility issue than let it fester into Tuesday.

Not that it will really help NBC's credibility. But it will at least put an end to more damage.