ABC Tells FCC Its Early Review Of Broadcast Licenses Chills Free Speech

UPDATED: The Walt Disney Co. and ABC are once again pushing back on the FCC, this time over the agency’s demand that it file early renewal applications for its broadcast licenses, a move that the company calls a threat to the First Amendment.

“It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America,” the company said in a filing with the agency on Thursday, along with its renewal applications for eight of its stations. “This is a threat to the First Amendment that this Commission and this proceeding must not be permitted to normalize.”

In April, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered Disney to submit early license renewals for its owned operated stations early, a highly unusual process required of broadcasters. The company’s licenses were otherwise up for renewal starting in 2028.

Read ABC’s objection to the FCC’s early renewal order.

The early renewal was related to the FCC’s investigation of Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the FCC said. But it came just a day after Donald Trump again called on ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

In a legal exhibit attached to the renewal applications, the company’ claimed that the “true purpose and inescapable effect” of the FCC’s order “are to suppress speech—to ramp up toward possible license revocation” and cause the stations “and others to think twice before they say something the government might dislike.”

ABC pointed to statements made by “senior government officials” against the network and Disney, as well as Carr’s warning that led to Kimmel’s temporary suspension from the airwaves last fall. After Kimmel made a joke about the response on the right to the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, Carr said on a podcast that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” warning of regulatory action.

The network also contended that the agency was exceeding its authority to act on a license renewal, as Congress decided that they must be evaluated on for a full term, not a partial one.

ABC also argued that the DEI investigation was a “pretextual” reason for ordering the early license renewal. As part of that probe, the FCC’s enforcement bureau had been seeking additional documents from Disney, finding the existing production insufficient. The commission “cannot explain why an extraordinary acceleration of license renewals was needed” in response to that dispute, the network said.

The network’s license renewal applications — made “under protest” — are for KABC-TV in Los Angeles; KFSN-TV in Fresco, CA; KGO-TV in San Francisco; KTRK-TV in Houston; WABC-TV in New York; WLC-TV in Chicago; WPVI-TV in Philadelphia and WTVD-TV in Durham, NC.

Earlier this month, ABC also challenged the FCC’s investigation of The View, amid claims that the show violated equal time rules after it featured James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, as a guest. Those regulations require that broadcasters that feature political candidates on their airwaves provide comparable time to rivals if requested. Among other things, ABC said that the show had received a “bona fide news exemption” from the FCC in 2002, and that it and other broadcast talk shows were being singled out while radio programs were not. Radio talk shows are dominated by conservative voices.

Denial of a broadcast license renewal is extremely rare, and is a process that can drag out for years. In the immediate term, the FCC can now take public comment on ABC’s license renewals and, among other things, designate the stations’ fates for a hearing. The network noted that the law prohibits the commission from granting a renewal more than 30 days before a license application. With years left until that date, the network said, any proceeding “can only end in adversity.” The alternative would be a “‘sword of Damocles’ of a burdensome hearing or even license revocation constantly hanging over” a station.

The FCC has to determine whether a broadcaster has operated in the public interest, a rather broad term that Carr has asserted gives him authority even over broadcast content.

Although the agency’s website states that it “is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press,” Carr on Thursday issued a public notice reminding “broadcasters of their public interest obligations.”

“The Commission will continue to analyze ownership structures to ensure that they are responsive to the needs of their local communities and are providing them with diverse viewpoints reflective of the information needs of those communities,” the notice stated.

Among other things, the notice contended that “courts have recognized that there are limits on broadcasters’ First Amendment rights.” “The mere denial of a license because the public interest requires it ‘is not a denial of free speech,’” the FCC said in the public notice.

Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC, wrote in a post on X, “Disney and its ABC stations are the latest victims of this administration’s campaign of censorship and control. I am glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”

In its filing on Thursday, ABC said that the FCC’s early license renewal demand “is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment.” The network also said that “opens the door to an assault on” station licenses, 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.”

The network also defended its hiring practices and recruitment efforts amid the FCC investigation. Carr has claimed that Disney may have engaged in “invidious” forms of discrimination as it pursued diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Last week, Carr told reporters that “there’s at least evidence that was indicating that Disney had created racially segregated spaces inside the company. There’s evidence indicating potentially that they were hiring based on race and gender and protected characteristics.” He added that the evidence extended to promotion and compensation.

The network made separate filings for each of its eight stations. In the one for its New York station, WABC-TV, the network said that the outlet had operated “consistently with the laws governing discrimination in employment.”

The company noted that the FCC’s Equal Employment Opportunity rule “expressly includes outreach activities that impact historically underrepresented groups such as ‘[c]o-sponsoring at least one job fair with organizations in the business or professional community whose membership includes substantial participation of women and minorities’ and ‘[l]isting of each upper-level category opening in a job bank or newsletter of media trade groups whose membership includes substantial participation of women and minorities.’”

WABC’s filing noted that the Commission “has never articulated—let alone adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking—any new standard for the EEO Rule.” The station noted that the station’s license was renewed “less than two years ago without any concerns regarding its outreach activities.”

The station, the network’s filing stated, was “now being punished under an interpretation the Commission invented but has never promulgated or even fully articulated—one that turns the longstanding EEO rules on their head. A licensee cannot be held to a standard it was never given notice of—that is not enforcement, it is arbitrary, capricious, and a denial of due process.”