Disney and ABC urged the FCC to toss out petitions calling for the agency to deny the renewal of broadcast licenses for ABC’s eight owned-and-operated TV stations, and they reiterated the assertion that the agency is targeting the stations with the “death penalty of license non-renewal” because President Donald Trump doesn’t like the programming carried on the network.
“For years, President Trump has expressly demanded that the Commission revoke ABC’s broadcast licenses for speech he dislikes,” Disney and ABC said in an FCC filing submitted July 29 and posted publicly Thursday. “Since his appointment, Chairman [Brendan] Carr has subsequently opened all manner of investigations and issued a slew of burdensome investigatory requests.”
The FCC’s Media Bureau in April issued an order forcing ABC to reapply for spectrum licenses for its eight owned-and-operated stations on an accelerated schedule. The agency claimed it was part of its probe into DEI practices at Disney and ABC — but the move came one day after President Donald Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired over a joke the late-night host made about First Lady Melania Trump. In May, Disney submitted license-renewal applications for the eight ABC stations, which the company said it did “under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional order.”
“For the first time in history, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered an entire group of local television stations commonly owned with a broadcast network to undergo simultaneous license renewal proceedings well before their current licenses expire. That makes these proceedings extraordinary and unprecedented,” Disney/ABC said in the latest filing.
They continued: “There is no question why the Commission is singling out these eight stations: Each is owned by ABC, and the Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs.” However, they added, “denying a license renewal for disfavored speech would be outright censorship.”
In the filing, Disney and ABC said the FCC “must deny the Petitions to Deny, or alternatively, dismiss these early renewal proceedings as untimely and unwarranted.”
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the filing said. “Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers. The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”
According to Disney and ABC, “The FCC has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the Stations’ licenses. The Commission has found none, because the Stations easily meet the standard for license renewal — which under the law means that the Commission cannot revoke their licenses or order a hearing on their renewal applications.”
“Calling up the license of a single Station — let alone all eight at once — while the Commission’s DEI investigation has found no violation is unnecessary, premature, and punitive,” the Disney/ABC filing said. “Even if any violation were ever substantiated, the Commission has a graduated set of well-established remedies far short of the corporate death penalty of license non-renewal. That the agency reached first for the most extreme sanction in its arsenal, before making any finding at all, reveals its true objective: to chill not only ABC, but every broadcaster watching.”
Two conservative advocacy groups, the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center, filed petitions with the FCC requesting ABC’s station licenses not be renewed.
The Center for American Rights’ petition argued that ABC’s stations are not operating “in the public interest,” alleging the network’s programs “show a consistent and overt partisan bias” and that “ABC engages in explicit racial and gender discrimination”; the group also alleged that “ABC cozies up to the Communist Chinese Party and airbrushes over religious and ethnic cleansing.” The Media Research Center said ABC’s license renewals should be denied because of its alleged “notorious efforts to improperly influence national elections, and its willful engagement in misinformation and the promotion of violence.”
In their reply, Disney/ABC said that “the few petitions submitted in opposition to the Stations’ applications come not from their local communities, but from interest groups with a mission to persuade the FCC to exert editorial control over the programming of networks like ABC.” It adds that the petitioners “identify no violation of the Communications Act or FCC rules of any kind, let alone one that could justify the extraordinary remedy of a designation for hearing or denial of a license renewal.”
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Regarding accusations that ABC programming engages in “news distortion” in violation of FCC rules, Disney/ABC said the agency’s policy in this area “provides even less justification for a denial based on statements made on ABC network comedy shows like ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ or opinion commentaries on shows like ‘The View.’” The filing continues, “Even assuming some of the commentary on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ or ‘The View’ contained factual inaccuracies, ‘isolated mistake[s]’ cannot count as news distortion.”
The FCC’s deadline for submitting comments opposing petitions to deny ABC’s license renewals was July 29. Replies must be filed no later than Aug. 5.
The agency has received more than 153,000 comments on the proceeding — fueled by Disney’s campaign across the eight local stations urging viewers to share comments about the FCC’s review with the agency. ABC’s eight owned-and-operated TV stations are: WABC-TV New York, KABC-TV Los Angeles, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KTRK-TV Houston, KGO-TV San Francisco, WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and KFSN-TV Fresno, Calif.
“The outpouring of support for the Stations has been unprecedented for a license renewal proceeding,” Disney and ABC said. “Over 140,000 comments have been received from the Stations’ local communities — from individual viewers to local police and firefighters, charities, businesses, and schools — and over 95% support the Stations. These supporters span the ideological spectrum but share a fundamental commitment to free speech and press freedom. This record demonstrates that the Stations serve the public interest with distinction.”
Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of former FCC officials urged the current agency leadership to terminate the “unprecedented” ABC proceeding, which they deemed an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment.
“This renewal proceeding is the latest attack in a sustained campaign by [FCC] Chairman [Brendan] Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes,” the coalition said in a filing. “And although the purported justification for the early renewal proceeding is that it is in aid of a Commission investigation into unlawful employment discrimination, it is in fact an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process.”
Disney and ABC also have received support from a consortium of 22 advocacy organizations, including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We urge you to continue to defend and exercise your First Amendment rights, so that we can all continue to exercise ours,” the coalition said in a letter addressed to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro.
Carr last week said the FCC will consider ABC’s decision to not carry a live broadcast of Trump’s July 16 speech about U.S. election security as part of its review of the ABC station licenses. At a press conference, Carr said, “I’m sure that there are going to be points raised in that proceeding” about ABC’s decision to not air Trump’s speech. “I think that when you have the president of the United States standing inside the White House delivering an important speech, I think that’s something that broadcasters should be carrying,” Carr said. Also at the FCC press conference, Anna Gomez, the agency’s only Democratic commissioner, pushed back on Carr’s assertion that broadcasters are compelled to carry a president’s speech.
In the FCC proceeding, Disney has tapped attorney Beth Wilkinson — who is also leading Paramount’s defense in the antitrust case filed by 12 states — alongside Paul Clement and Jennifer Tatel. The legal team is led by Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s senior executive vice president, chief legal and global affairs officer. The proceeding is FCC Media Bureau Docket No. 26-131.