Trump FCC warns all broadcasters to follow orders or be punished like ABC - Ars Technica

Overview

Trump FCC warns all broadcasters to follow orders or be punished like ABC

ABC says early renewal for all stations is unprecedented, has no legitimate purpose.

Details

The eight broadcast TV stations owned by ABC filed applications for early license renewals under protest yesterday, accusing the Federal Communications Commission of trying to suppress speech as part of “an unprecedented attack on a single company’s entire portfolio of broadcast licenses.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses from President Trump’s least favorite networks. He recently ordered the Disney-owned ABC to file early license renewal applications for all of its TV stations over allegations that its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices violate anti-discrimination rules.

“The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like,” ABC said in its filings. The FCC is “using the license process renewal to punish a broadcaster for its editorial choices” in “an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices,” it said.

ABC said the order it received “sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America.” If that warning wasn’t clear enough, the FCC yesterday issued a public notice to “remind” all broadcasters of “their public interest obligations.” The public notice was issued on the same day as the deadline the FCC set for ABC to submit its early license renewal applications, and urged all broadcasters to “review and modify their operations to ensure compliance.”

Warning that other broadcasters could face threats to their licenses, the public notice said the FCC “will not hesitate to exercise its statutory authority to ensure that broadcasters either fulfill their public interest obligation or provide the privilege of being a broadcast licensee to someone that will fulfill that duty.” The FCC said it may order early license reviews or other punitive measures when it “finds that a broadcaster has failed to serve the public interest.” The notice said broadcasters have an “obligation to offer programming responsive to the needs and interests of the local communities they are licensed to serve.”

ABC submitted individual filings for WABC-TV in New York; WPVI-TV in Philadelphia; WTVD in Durham, North Carolina; WLS-TV in Chicago; KGO-TV in San Francisco; KFSN-TV in Fresno, California; KTRK-TV in Houston; and KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

The station “submits this license renewal application under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional Order issued on April 28, 2026, by the Media Bureau,” ABC’s filings said. “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 Order has no legitimate purpose.”

ABC said it was filing the applications without waiving any rights and called on the FCC to rescind the order.

“There is no information that the application will reveal that the Commission could not obtain through other means,” ABC wrote. “The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment. Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail.”

Carr wrote in an X post yesterday that the “FCC has been investigating Disney for over a year now after reports surfaced alleging that it had been discriminating against people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws,” and that “Disney only filed these applications to renew their ABC broadcast licenses after the FCC informed the company that their responses to the agency’s investigation had been disingenuous, deficient, and improper.”

ABC said in its filings that the company produced over 11,000 pages of documents in response to a series of FCC requests. ABC said the order to file early license renewals “purports to investigate ‘possible violations’ of the ‘prohibition on unlawful discrimination,’ but never identifies what violation it had in mind.”

“It is not credible to now declare the early renewal process ‘essential’ to the same investigation, particularly when after releasing the Order, the Enforcement Bureau issued yet another request for information to which the Company is required to respond less than 24 hours after [this] filing,” ABC said. “The early renewal procedure is not an investigative tool and adds nothing to the Commission’s investigative capacity.”

Arguing that the order serves as a threat to all broadcasters, ABC said:

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.

As we’ve previously written, legal experts say the law is on ABC’s side in its fight against the unusual broadcast license review. Under a 1996 change to communications law, the FCC faces what has been described as “an almost insurmountable burden” for denying a broadcast license renewal. ABC’s eight TV stations are scheduled for renewals between 2028 and 2031, and the FCC order to start the renewal process early doesn’t change those expiration dates.

Carr previously threatened ABC station licenses in September 2025, alleging at the time that airing Jimmy Kimmel’s show might violate the rarely enforced news distortion policy. Carr later opened an equal-time rule investigation into ABC’s The View, even though the interview portions of talk shows have historically been exempt from the rule. Last week, Carr’s FCC opened a proceeding that seeks public comment on whether The View qualifies for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule.

Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner on the FCC, wrote that ABC’s filings “expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.” Gomez also criticized the public notice that warned broadcasters about their public interest obligations.

“The ‘public interest’ does not mean this administration’s interests,” Gomez wrote. “Broadcasters should ignore these latest threats and stiffen their spine. Pushing back is the only thing that will stop this FCC from abusing its power to silence speech and punish independent reporting.”

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Key Takeaways

Trump FCC warns all broadcasters to follow orders or be punished like ABC
ABC says early renewal for all stations is unprecedented, has no legitimate purpose
The eight broadcast TV stations owned by ABC filed applications for early license renewals under protest yesterday, accusing the Federal Communications Commission of trying to suppress speech as part of “an unprecedented attack on a single company’s entire portfolio of broadcast licenses
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses from President Trump’s least favorite networks
“The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like,” ABC said in its filings