Republican Hung Cao has struck a deal with NBC to receive free political ad time in a key time slot Monday night after his opponent in the Virginia U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, recently appeared on “Saturday Night Live.”\
NBC has agreed to two minutes of air time for Mr. Cao’s ads. That’s equivalent of the two minutes that Mr. Kaine was on screen during the nearly six-minute skit on SNL.
The Republican Senate candidate’s ads will air this evening on NBC stations across Virginia. Three ads will air between 8 and 10 p.m. EST when “The Voice” is broadcasting, and one will broadcast during the “Saturday Night Live” election special between 10 and 11 p.m. EST.
“The Voice” gets better ratings on a Monday night than “SNL” would in its regular weekend time slot.
Mr. Cao’s ads will air on every NBC station with a viewing market in Virginia, some of them affiliates in North Carolina, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
NBC sparked outrage from Republicans and an X post from Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr after the network appeared to violated a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) equal-time rule when Mr. Kaine and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the live sketch-comedy program without their political opponents getting an invitation to appear as well.
“REMINDER re: NBC / SNL candidate appearances … The federal Equal Time rule requires broadcast stations to afford *all legally qualified candidates* rights to use airtime / facilities,” Mr. Carr wrote Monday on X. “RFK Jr, Jill Stein, Hung Cao, and all other qualified campaigns should take note.”
Mr. Cao, in a statement on X, responded to his opponent’s appearance on “SNL.”
“Many of my supporters are saying I should sue NBC for giving free airtime to my opponent Tim Kaine right before my election. I disagree,” Mr. Cao said.
“I was barnstorming 12 towns and cities across Virginia yesterday talking about how we’re going to secure our border & lower prices, while Tim was being a human punch-line in New York City.”
According to Cao campaign counsel Steve Roberts the situation is now handled after NBC realized “they had no choice in the matter.”
“They put a candidate for Senate on a non-news program, purely entertainment, which, by definition, means that they owe, you know, other qualified candidates equal time, on equal footing,” Mr. Roberts told The Washington Times. “We had a very short amount of time to negotiate a deal.
“You got to give NBC credit. They did realize their error, and, worked with us very swiftly to resolve it. But Hung Cao was taking the fight to them and prepared to fight for every last second of airtime,” Mr. Roberts said.
The network also gave the campaign of former President Donald Trump two free commercial slots on Sunday.
Mr. Trump delivered a scorching 60-second, pre-recorded message, which was shown towards the end of both the NFL “Sunday Night Football” game, typically the week’s highest-rated program, and Sunday evening’s NASCAR race, another sporting event popular with Mr. Trump’s voting base.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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