Trump FCC Orders ABC To Renew Eight Broadcast Licenses Years Early, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Network Could Cover The President Without Periodically Reapplying To Exist

WASHINGTON. The Federal Communications Commission this week ordered the eight television stations owned by ABC to file applications to renew their broadcast licenses years ahead of schedule, resolving a long-standing concern that a national network could report on the President without first being made to reapply, in writing, for permission to keep operating.

The licenses in question, covering stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Fresno, and Durham, were not scheduled for renewal until sometime between 2028 and 2031. The commission, chaired by Trump ally Brendan Carr, instructed the network to submit all eight at once anyway, a step the agency had not taken in more than five decades and had never once demanded of a single network's commonly owned stations. The FCC described the request as routine, in the manner of a landlord asking a tenant to re-sign a lease four years early, simultaneously, and only after the tenant complained about the building.

ABC filed the applications "under protest," attaching an objection letter that called the order "unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional" and accused the agency of "unconstitutional retaliation and coercion." The network noted that the only plausible reason to issue such an order was to punish a station for speech the government did not like, an interpretation the administration rejected on the grounds that it preferred a different one. Disney, ABC's parent company, retained Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement, who had earlier warned the commission that its conduct posed a broad threat to free speech.

Chairman Carr tied the license demand to a year-old FCC inquiry into Disney's diversity practices, explaining that the commission had been examining whether the company discriminated on the basis of race or gender, and that the appropriate remedy for alleged discrimination was to make the company's television stations periodically justify their continued access to the public airwaves. A senior official within the administration confirmed that the two matters were entirely separate and also the same. "Nobody is being punished for coverage," the official said. "We would simply like every ABC station to explain, on a schedule we set, why it should be allowed to keep broadcasting."

The order arrives against a familiar backdrop. Disney paid the President $15 million two years ago to settle a defamation suit, Paramount paid $16 million to settle another as its merger awaited FCC approval, and the President has spent the interval publicly demanding the firing of an ABC late-night host and threatening fresh litigation over coverage he found unflattering. Together the episodes resolve a long-standing concern that a company doing business before the federal government might calculate that defending its speech in court was cheaper than simply paying to make the President stop talking about it.

At press time, the FCC had clarified that broadcasters with nothing to hide had nothing to fear, provided they were prepared to prove it once every few years at a time of the commission's choosing.