Conservative fight against license renewals for ABC stations heats up

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 6 Jul 2026 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Mon 6 Jul 2026 10.06 EDT


A group of prominent conservative organizations has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny license renewal requests from the eight local television stations owned and operated by ABC, accusing the network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting the Chinese communist party.

The petitions come after the commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, took the nearly unprecedented step of requiring the network, a frequent recipient of attacks from Donald Trump, to apply several years early to maintain its ability to broadcast in markets around the country.

While Carr has said the early license renewal process stems from an FCC investigation into ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, petitioners are free to include a variety of grievances against the network and concerns about whether ABC is operating in the public interest.

The petitions – part of an open process that allows anyone to argue that ABC is not fit to hold publicly owned television licenses – came from groups like the Center for American Rights, which has played a significant role during Carr’s tenure atop the FCC agency as an initiator of complaints against major broadcast television networks. In a petition to deny filed last Monday, the group said the stations were not being operated “in the public interest” in part because ABC’s programs “show a consistent and overt partisan bias”, citing the group’s past complaints about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and the network’s moderation of a 2024 presidential debate, among other concerns.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jul/06/abc-license-renewals-fcc

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Time to go after Sinclair.

TV giant known for rightwing disinformation doubles down on its national news agenda

The Growth of Sinclair’s Conservative Media Empire

SOME DU CONTEXT

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141768936
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142027761
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142033802

[Jacson6]

1. The FCC can only regulate for technical reasons or for the seven dirty words.

If they try anything else it end up in the courts and be shot down.

[LiberalArkie]

2. Legally, yes. But when has that stopped this administration?

[onenote]

5. Sort of correct, but its actually more complicated

Professor Speta's article provides a good, detailed analysis of the FCC's authority and some of the relevant precedents. It should be added that the FCC can and has revoked or refused to renew licenses based on "character" issues with the owner or "lack of candor" in dealing with the FCC. See, for example, the RKO General case in 1980. Violations of anti-discrimination laws also have been cited as a basis for revoking or denying a license renewal.

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-fcc-lacks-authority-to-punish-broadcasters-for-their-viewpoints-by-james-b-speta/

[BurnDoubt]

3. Praise The Lord...

And pass the remote.
I can’t wait to hear all about FOX news’s “fair and balanced reporting”. And the quality of their verity.
Someone should be filing on them as we speak.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. The rules are different for cable outlets like Faux

That's why I brought up the RW religious loon-owned Sinclair, which includes a pile of RW hijacked OTA stations (parallel with the ABC-owned OTA ones).