It’s been nearly a year since Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended for one of his jokes on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and since then it seems FCC chairman Brendan Carr has been coming down on ABC. The View, in particular, has come under fire from the agency recently, as well as eight local stations. The network continues to defend its properties against FCC interference, and a new court filing calls out Carr’s agency for “extraordinary and unprecedented” actions.
ABC and Disney are facing action from the FCC on two investigations, and with a possible deadline looming on its decision, the network brought on veteran attorney Beth Wilkinson. On July 30, new court documents were filed calling out Brendan Carr for requiring eight local stations to undergo an early renewal process for their broadcast licenses. The documents read (per THR):
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. 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.
The documents make clear that the early renewal procedures were enacted “under protest,” after the FCC said earlier this year that Disney was not open enough in its responses to questions about DEI policies. The filing also pointed out ABC's campaign that reportedly accumulated more than 150,000 comments in support of the network, allegedly including Republicans and a bipartisan group of former FCC commissioners and officials.
ABC also addressed what’s been going on with The View amidst the FCC’s probe into whether or not the Emmy-winning daytime talk show qualifies as a “news” or “entertainment” program. The filing said:
[The FCC] now appears poised to find that The View must provide equal opportunities to all legally qualified political candidates if it interviews one candidate on the show, which would represent a reversal of decades of agency precedent.
It sounds like the FCC is going to designate The View as entertainment, meaning it would not be exempt from the “Equal Time” rule that says if a program gives a spotlight to a candidate from one political party, it must also provide the same spotlight to a candidate of the opposing party.
ABC’s court filing also issued a warning that theirs is not the only network that should be concerned about such FCC interference, writing:
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. 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.
The View has been welcoming conservative voices over the past couple of months, including a popular interview with J.D. Vance in June and one with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene early in July.
We’ll have to see what other action is taken by either Disney or the FCC in the coming weeks. You can catch The View at 11 a.m. ET each weekday morning on ABC.
