Conservative advocacy groups and ABC might make strange bedfellows, but right-leaning organizations are going to bat for the Disney-owned network in its battle with the Federal Communications Commission.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in April that eight ABC-owned stations must prove they have been operating in the public interest as part of an ongoing look at Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] practices. Carr has also said ABC should have aired President Donald Trump’s primetime address last week, suggesting the decision to skip it was not in the public interest.
A group of conservative and free-market organizations, including Center for Individual Freedom, Citizens Against Government Waste and Americans for Tax Reform, penned a letter to Carr on Wednesday urging the chairman to avoid setting a precedent that could hurt non-liberal organizations in the future.
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“From media and broadband to the space economy, your deregulatory record is helping unleash investment and growth, and we are grateful for your leadership in getting government out of the way. It is in that same spirit that we respectfully urge the Federal Communications Commission to preserve the well-established, routine, predictable, and presumptive nature of broadcast license renewal,” the letter, which has been obtained by Fox News Digital, stated.
“We ask that the FCC avoid steps that would transform renewal from the largely ministerial process Congress designed into a discretionary checkpoint that would invite the politicization that conservatives, free-market advocates and others have long condemned,” the letter continued. “Our concern is that establishing precedents of non-routine renewal creates a powerful lever that future FCCs—including ones hostile to conservative, religious, or otherwise disfavored broadcasters—would be all too willing to pull.”
The letter declared, “The surest protection against that future is to keep the renewal process predictable today.” It states that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 made station renewals “effectively presumptive” in order to allow broadcasters to “serve their communities without the perpetual threat of losing the franchise on which everything else depends.”
“Consistent with that design, the Commission has historically reserved non-routine renewal for genuinely extraordinary circumstances, such as failures that go to a station’s basic capacity to maintain its operation or malfeasance,” the letter stated. “Preserving that high and content-neutral bar is precisely what keeps the Commission out of the business of judging speech.”
The Disney-owned ABC affiliates’ licenses were originally scheduled to be renewed between 2028 and 2031, but Trump’s FCC expedited the process. The stations are KFSN-TV in Fresno, KABC-TV in Los Angeles, KGO-TV in San Francisco, WLS-TV in Chicago, WABC-TV in New York, WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia and KTRK-TV in Houston.
The conservative groups want them to easily keep their licenses in order to “deny future Commissions tools and precedents to wield against conservative media.”
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Leaders from Center for Individual Freedom, American Commitment, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens Against Government Waste, The Committee for Justice, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, Digital Liberty, Innovation Economy Institute, Institute for Policy Innovation, National Taxpayers Union, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Taxpayers Protection Alliance and Young Voices each signed the letter.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
ABC is home to entertainment programs like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” along with news offerings including “Good Morning America,” “The View” and “World News Tonight.”
The FCC is also investigating ABC’s “The View” amid the agency’s crackdown on equal time for political candidates after Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico appeared on the daytime gabfest. Disney’s ABC believes “The View” is bona fide news and, therefore, exempt from the equal time rule.
