When late-night host Jimmy Kimmel clashed with the FCC this week, the headlines focused on politics. But according to longtime Fox News executive and Elephants in Rooms host Ken LaCorte, the real story isn’t about Kimmel or Trump — it’s about how the federal government still wields enormous, outdated power over America’s broadcast media.

LaCorte, joining Breaking Battlegrounds, argued that the FCC’s structure was built for a bygone era, when only a handful of networks controlled the airwaves. That monopoly, he explained, came with billions in free broadcasting rights granted to ABC, CBS, and NBC in exchange for vague promises of serving the “public good.” Today, those requirements often amount to little more than token gestures, while the networks continue to profit from an arrangement he calls a “massive gravy train.”

The conversation digs into whether the FCC should still play gatekeeper at all. Should a government appointee have the power to influence who gets airtime — or should those broadcast licenses be auctioned off, with taxpayers reaping the benefits? LaCorte points to the internet domain system as a possible model: everyone pays into the system fairly, but no regulator gets to decide what can or can’t be said.

At its core, the debate isn’t just about Jimmy Kimmel. It’s about free speech, corporate welfare, and whether America’s media watchdog is long overdue for reform in the age of cable and streaming.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up today, Ken LaCorte, is a friend of the program, spent 20 years behind the scenes at Fox News and now hosts the podcast Elephants in Rooms, where he dives into the tough conversations most people avoid. Follow him on X at Ken LaCorte. Ken, welcome back to the program.

**Chuck Warren: **Again, so all hell has broken out this week with Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC. My first question to you is, you think that Trump’s appointed FCC chair is overstepping his responsibility or just simply being a media enforcer for Trump?

**Ken LaCorte: **You know that the tough one to answer. I mean he is certainly doing things that no other FCC commissioner had done in in recent years. Than the question is as well should they have have done this in recent years. And you know the whole FCC set up is a little bit of a scam. In the sense that that the airwave right that CBS, NBC, ABC get.

That’s the biggest form of corporate welfare. It’s billions and billions of dollars of value that they get for zero. They they don’t pay for those things and you know you can put up a you can put up a pizza making commercial on for an hour on on on channel two at six o’clock in the afternoon and you’re gonna get millions of people watching it.

And so it’s put them in a bizarre situation. So that that, this was obviously set up years and years ago when you could only divide the the television bandwidth into so many channels and so you had to give monopolies to those to those entities that got it. Then hey the first three that got it were ABC, CBS, NBC. And the fig leaf was well you can have these for free but you better do things in the public good.

That they’ve had the equal put the the you know the fair of the fair we give fair and balanced. You you know that this is this is why you see when you go in at 2 in the morning you can’t go to sleep you see all these ads to prevent suicide and drug abuse because they legally have to say that they are are are not being a a just a for-profit entity but they’re helping the helping society. Well not kinda all all nonsense and it’s just that massive gravy train that that’s going on.

Well because of that the FCC has a lot more power than than than I think it should have because the FCC is now saying well are are we enforcing those people protection things are you allowed to be doing that and to be honest I don’t think there should be any government entity who says Jimmy Kimmel shouldn’t say that he should get off the air right.

What they should say is how about this. For five years every five years we have an open bid on how much the the airspace of channel two is put in your billions of dollars given to the government and and and let us pay a little bit less in taxes and then you could say whatever you want on that. So the whole thing is just this kind of unholy mixed up thing that that allows at FCC commissioner to be telling uh...to be kind of winking and nodding and you know nice network you got there shame if something would happen. I mean as a conservative I don’t like that

**Chuck Warren: **No.

**Ken LaCorte: **So yeah. I’d throw out the whole thing.

**Chuck Warren: **So what do you think, so should we have them start paying?

Ken LaCorte: Oh I would try…

****Chuck Warren: **I mean, for example, you buy domains, you have a domain for your podcast and your YouTube show. So I’m part of that ICANN community which governs this. And like for every domain you sell, you have to give 50, 60 cents to ICANN which governs the internet. I mean, why couldn’t we have the same structure for public broadcasting for the four channels?

**Ken LaCorte: **And we’re only talking about a handful of channels. The other 4,000 channels on your cable system, we figured out a way. And if an FCC commissioner came up and said, well, I’ve got a problem with MSNBC or I’ve got a problem with Fox News Channel, the answer would be, go pound sand. We don’t broadcast over the airwaves. You don’t control it in any way, shape, or form. And that model works pretty well.

Sam Stone: Yeah, 100 percent.

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