Trump's 'SNL' appearance prompts NBC to give airtime to 4 GOP candidates
Politics
Trump’s ‘SNL’ appearance prompts NBC to give airtime to 4 GOP candidates
NBC has agreed to give four Republican presidential candidates free airtime on affiliates in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina after they complained that Donald Trump unfairly benefited from appearing as “Saturday Night Live” host this month. John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, James Gilmore and Lindsey Graham each will get about 12 minutes of time to tout their candidacies during prime time on Friday and Saturday, and during this week’s “Saturday Night Live.” Republican George Pataki also complained, but the network did not announce an agreement with his campaign.
This amounts to literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of free advertising on NBC affiliates.
George Pataki
The candidates said they deserved the time to counter Trump’s appearance in a non-news setting, based on federal equal time provisions. Trump, who hosted “SNL” on Nov. 7, scored some 12 minutes of screen time during the comedy show, NBC calculated. The decision doesn’t come cheap for NBC; the free airtime will be taken out of time set aside for network commercials and promotions.
