(CNN) — The eight local ABC television stations targeted by President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission have generated a staggering amount of public support in recent weeks.
ABC says the reason is clear: Supporters across the ideological spectrum “share a fundamental commitment to free speech and press freedom.”
In a new legal filing, the Disney-owned network is urging the FCC to drop its politically motivated challenge to the eight station licenses — though it fully expects the challenge to continue.
The filing came on Wednesday, the last day of the FCC’s public comment period for its highly unusual proceeding against the eight stations. The commission’s website shows that more than 150,000 comments were submitted; other open proceedings have at most a few hundred responses.
The comments were overwhelmingly pro-ABC, with passionate defenses of local TV and the First Amendment along with criticism of the Trump administration. Hundreds of the comments called out FCC chair Brendan Carr by name.
“The outpouring of support for the stations has been unprecedented for a license renewal proceeding,” Disney said in its filing.
So in other words, ABC’s on-air lobbying effort clearly worked. Disney publicized the FCC threat earlier in the summer and urged station viewers to submit comments.
A similar campaign for “The View” resulted in almost 80,000 comments, largely opposing the FCC’s investigation of the talk show over so-called “equal time” rules.
Support from across the spectrum
Among ABC’s defenders: Conservative and free-market organizations that support other parts of Trump’s agenda but say the FCC is at risk of violating free speech with its actions against the network.
Disney executives are privately considering filing a First Amendment lawsuit over the Trump administration’s pressure campaign, according to sources at the company.
Carr has claimed that he is simply enforcing existing laws and regulations, but his actions have singled out media companies that Trump disdains. Trump has been vocal, as recently as this month, about wanting ABC to be punished.
So the most likely next step, sometime in August, is a referral for an official hearing about whether to renew ABC’s station licenses.
Back in April, at the same time the Trump administration was pressuring ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel, Carr ordered the network to file early-renewal paperwork for its station licenses. The eight licenses in question aren’t due for renewal for years.
“There is no question why the commission is singling out these eight stations,” Disney’s lawyers wrote in this week’s filing: “Each is owned by ABC, and the administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs.”
Carr has claimed the order was a natural progression of his probe into Disney’s DEI initiatives.
But that probe “has found no violation,” so calling up the licenses “is unnecessary, premature, and punitive,” Disney’s filing says.
And even if a violation were found and litigated, the FCC has “well-established remedies far short of the corporate death penalty of license non-renewal,” the filing adds. “That the agency reached first for the most extreme sanction in its arsenal, before making any finding at all, reveals its true objective: to chill not only ABC, but every broadcaster watching.”
FCC veterans understand the high stakes and unusual circumstances of this license fight.
In a filing earlier this week, a collection of both Democratic and Republican former FCC officials wrote that the agency under Carr is trying to “censor Disney’s and ABC’s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.”
The commission’s sole Democrat, Anna Gomez, has issued similar warnings. Gomez said Thursday that “a small number of partisan voices” have tried to hijack the license process “into a referendum on a network they dislike, but the public refuses to let local stations become collateral damage in the FCC’s political games.”
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