ABC stations call FCC’s early call for license renewal ‘unconstitutional’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Local TV stations owned by ABC across the United States blasted the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday for launching an “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” early review of their broadcast licenses as a dispute between the network and the Trump-controlled agency intensifies.

“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 in an objection that accompanied paperwork filed to comply with the FCC’s demand for early applications to renew licenses.

ABC-owned stations in seven other markets filed similar objections. The FCC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The objection is part of a mounting confrontation between the FCC and one of America’s most prominent broadcast networks. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the agency has launched probes of ABC touching on everything from its diversity practices to the network’s moderation of a 2024 presidential debate to guests booked on “The View.” President Donald Trump has also repeatedly called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired.

But the FCC’s move in April to begin early reviews of the broadcast licenses of ABC-owned stations in eight local markets attracted particularly close attention. The licenses for stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia as well as Fresno, California, and Durham, North Carolina, were initially slated to come up for renewal between 2028 and 2031.

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democrat, has called the reviews an “egregious assault on the First Amendment.” On Thursday, she said she was glad to see the stations “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 objection, WABC said the “ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company.”

“It is to the public,” the station said. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”

That reflects a stark shift in ABC’s approach to political scrutiny in Washington. In the weeks before Trump returned to the White House, the network paid a controversial $15 million defamation settlement, a move that did little to quell criticism from Trump and his allies in the coming years.

The network mounted a more robust defense of free speech in a filing last month responding to an FCC review of whether “The View” was subject to equal time rules. The agency argued that the law encouraged more speech but ABC warned that open political discussion was being chilled by the Trump administration.

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” according to a filing on behalf of both KTRK-TV and ABC.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.