In a fiery legal filing to the Federal Communications Commission Thursday, ABC submitted early renewal applications for its eight owned and operated local TV stations, though the Disney-owned broadcaster noted that it was doing so “under protest.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here,” the filing, from the network’s flagship WABC New York, states. “The Order has no legitimate purpose.”
ABC argues that the FCC, under chairman Brendan Carr, was attempting to “suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process.”
ABC cites the timing of the request, which came days after ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel came under sharp criticism from President Trump, who demanded he be fired over a joke he made about First Lady Melania Trump.
“The timing of the Order makes the retaliatory purpose unmistakable,” the filing states. “The Order suddenly emerged the day after public calls for punitive action in response to comments made during ABC Network programming.”
Carr told reporters last month that the timing was “unrelated” to the Kimmel news:
“I understand that anything that we do is is now framed as ‘in the wake of’ in the headlines, and I understand that’s how it is, but we’ve got to make these decisions based on where we are in the investigations and what is best for next steps in that enforcement proceeding in the headlines can be what the headlines are, but that was the basis for our decision.”
Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, however, said “this is clearly a pretext. I mean, give me a break.”
In addition to Kimmel, the FCC has also targeted The View, the daytime panel show, suggesting that it may have run afoul of its equal opportunity provision for political candidates. ABC had previously responded to that effort, calling it “unprecedented” and arguing that it would “chill” speech.
The FCC has said that the early license renewal is about Disney’s DEI practices, not its programming,
Instead, the network says that the ultimate loser in this fight will be TV viewers, who will lose the accountability reporting and independent journalism that the current system delivers.
“The ultimate injury here is not to the Station or its parent company. It is to the public,” the filing states. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence. The Order—both on its own terms and as a signal to other broadcasters—advances exactly that result. A press that edits itself to avoid government displeasure is not a free press. The Commission should not be the instrument of that outcome.”
And the extraordinary nature of the request, focused not on just a single station but a whole network of them, is a part of that toolkit, ABC argues:
“Simultaneously forcing every station in a media company’s portfolio to file premature license renewal applications is not a regulatory tool,” the filing states. “It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices, which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America. This is a threat to the First Amendment that this Commission and this proceeding must not be permitted to normalize.”
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