...why would this be an FCC issue?
> Surely if any aspect of these episodes turned out to be mischaracterized, let alone staged, there should be consequences, no?
"Any aspect"? No. (Is there a Betteridge's law for statements following "surely"? If not I'm calling it Rumack's Razor [1].)
And we have no evidence so far anything has been staged, much less to the detriment of telecommunications consumers.
[1] https://screenrant.com/airplane-best-quotes-ranked-dont-call...
For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49929433
They seem to agree [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/ftc-openai-ant...