Walt Disney Co.โs ABC is forcefully resisting Federal Communications Commission efforts to soften the networkโs programming, accusing the federal agency of an overreach that violates 1st Amendment freedoms.
Last week, the FCC took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move โ widely interpreted as an effort to chill the networkโs speech โ came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The FCC separately has taken aim at ABCโs daytime discussion show, โThe View,โ which delves deeply into politics.
The FCC has questioned whether the show, which prominently features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, could continue toclaim an exemption to rules that require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of political candidates.
In its filing this week with the FCC, Disneyโs Houston television station raised the stakes in the dispute over โThe View,โ calling the commissionโs actions โunprecedentedโ and โbeyond the Commissionโs authority.โ The ABC stationโs petition for a declaratory ruling said โThe View,โ has long qualified as a โbona fideโ news interview program with freedom to conduct interviews of legally qualified political candidates.
โThe Commissionโs actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,โ the Houston station KTRK-TV said in the filing.
The networkโs firm stance sets up a clash with the Trump administration, including the presidentโs hand-picked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kimmel and other ABC programming. Earlier this year, Carr announced that decades-old exemptions from the so-called โequal time ruleโ for news programs, including โThe View,โ were no longer valid.
ABCโs strenuous arguments mark a departure for the Disney-owned outlet.
In December 2024, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the network quickly settled a lawsuit over statements made by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump found offensive. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to end his legal fight โ sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who accused the network of caving on a case it could have won.
โSome may dislike certainโor even mostโof the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,โ the station said in its filing. โSuch dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views. The government does not get to decide โwhat shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.โโ
The station noted that, while the FCC has questioned the exemption for โThe View,โ which dates back to 2002, the FCC hasnโt showed interest in regulating programs on other networks, โincluding the many voices โ conservative and liberal โ on broadcast radio.โ
โThe danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,โ ABC said.
On April 28, Carr called for a review of Disneyโs broadcast licenses two years before any of them were set to expire, citing the agencyโs year-old inquiry into Disneyโs diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.