Fred Thompson and Law & Order reruns

I caught this today on the Politico:

[Fred] Thompson's role on NBC's "Law & Order" gives him such a TV-exposure advantage that the network, due to the Federal Communications Commission's equal-airtime rules, has pledged to drop episodes featuring his character if he officially joins the race.

Here's the explanation from The Washington Post:

The equal-time provision, enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, has been a staple of political campaigning for decades. Its primary goal is to make sure that candidates cannot be frozen out of crucial television time for their campaign commercials.

Candidates' appearances on newscasts, interview programs and at news events are exempted from the rule. So are incidental appearances in documentaries.

But the rule has been applied to television and movie stars in the past.

During the 2003 gubernatorial race in California, television stations dropped all Arnold Schwarzenegger movies out of fear that showing them would require them to give countless hours of free airtime to all 134 other candidates for governor.

Stations also dropped "Bedtime for Bonzo" and other Ronald Reagan movies during his campaigns for governor of California and president.