On the same day ABC’s eight television stations filed license-renewal applications “under protest,” the Federal Communications Commission sent a message to every broadcaster in the country: review your operations, or face the consequences.
The public notice, issued May 28, reminded all licensees of their “public interest obligations” and urged them to “review and modify their operations to ensure compliance.” It warned that the FCC “will not hesitate to exercise its statutory authority” — up to and including stripping a license and handing the frequency to someone who will use it.
The notice was the latest step in a campaign by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, that broadcasters and First Amendment lawyers say is designed to make an example of ABC and frighten the rest of the industry into line. ABC’s own filings make that point better than any critic could. “It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America,” WABC in New York wrote.
The fight began in April, when the FCC’s Media Bureau ordered ABC’s eight owned-and-operated stations to file early applications to renew their broadcast licenses. The licenses were not scheduled to expire until 2028 through 2031, and the stations — in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh and Fresno — serve tens of millions of households. The commission said the accelerated review was part of its investigation into whether Disney, ABC’s parent, discriminated on the basis of race, gender or other protected characteristics in violation of federal law, an inquiry Carr has pursued for more than a year.
ABC’s stations filed their applications under protest on May 28. In the accompanying objections, the company called the order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional,” noting that the FCC “had not demanded early renewal in over five decades” and had never before ordered a group of network-owned stations to renew simultaneously. The company said it had already produced more than 11,000 pages of documents in response to the commission’s requests and that the order had no investigative purpose beyond punishment. “The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like,” the filings said.
The history between Carr and ABC is long. In September 2025, Carr threatened the network’s licenses over the late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, citing a rarely enforced “news distortion” policy. He later opened an equal-time-rule investigation into “The View.” The April order came a day after President Trump called for Kimmel to be fired over a joke about first lady Melania Trump.
Carr rejected the idea that the license review is political. “The FCC has been investigating Disney for over a year now after reports surfaced alleging that it had been discriminating against people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics,” he wrote on X. Disney, he said, had filed the renewal applications only after the commission found its responses “disingenuous, deficient, and improper.”
Legal scholars say the commission faces long odds if it tries to deny a renewal. A 1996 change to communications law made it nearly impossible to reject a license application — lawyers describe the burden on the FCC as “almost insurmountable” — and ABC’s stations easily meet the standard. The fight, in other words, is less about the outcome than about the threat itself.
That is what worries the industry. The public notice applies to every broadcaster, and its timing — issued the same day ABC’s deadline arrived — was read by station executives as a warning that no license is safe. Local newsrooms, already skittish about their coverage of the administration, are reviewing their content for anything that could be used against them, according to people familiar with the discussions. Journalists at several network affiliates said they have been asked to flag stories that touch on the president, his family or his administration before they air.
The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, said the agency’s actions amount to naked political retribution. “The ‘public interest’ does not mean this administration’s interests,” Gomez wrote. “Broadcasters should ignore these latest threats and stiffen their spine. Pushing back is the only thing that will stop this FCC from abusing its power to silence speech and punish independent reporting.”
Even some of Carr’s allies are uneasy. A coalition of 14 conservative organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom, wrote to the commission in May to support its deregulatory agenda but urged it to “preserve the well-established, routine, predictable, and presumptive nature of broadcast license renewals” — a careful way of saying the ABC proceeding goes too far.
For ABC, the legal path is clear: it will fight the order in the courts if the commission presses forward, and its filings reserve all rights to do so. For the rest of the industry, the calculus is murkier. Broadcasters need the commission’s good will for everything from station sales to technical approvals, and the message of the past month is that the agency is willing to use its power. When a regulator can make an example of one network and put every other licensee on notice in the same week, the chilling effect is the point.
