In what may be the strongest pushback by any network yet against attempts by the Federal Communications Commission to regulate broadcast content, Disney’s ABC submitted a sternly worded filing with the FCC on Thursday.
The media company argued that recent actions by the commission and the Trump administration “threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech.”
The New York Times noted the filing was signed by Paul D. Clement, one of the most experienced U.S. Supreme Court litigators.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing, according to NBC News.
ABC made the filing in response to an commission probe into “The View” for potentially violating equal time rules for political candidates.
It also comes a week after the commission announced it was launching an early review of the eight broadcast licenses owned and operated by the media company, including ABC’s stations in Los Angeles and New York.
[Related: “LeGeyt Says FCC License Action Creates “Significant Uncertainty”]
In January, the FCC’s Media Bureau issued guidance telling broadcast stations airing certain late night and daytime talk shows that they are required to give equal time to rival candidates and that programs “motivated by partisan purposes” would not be given a news exemption that had been given during the last two decades to late night programming and talk shows.
The ABC filing argued that while the commission now questioned the “equal time” exemption shows like “The View” previously enjoyed, it had not expressed a similar interpretation of the equal opportunities rule to other broadcasters — including “the many voices — conservative and liberal — on broadcast radio.”
“And as a broad array of voices, including many conservatives, have recognized, if the government is allowed to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint in a Republican administration, there is little preventing it from doing so when the Democrats are in charge,” ABC said.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat among its three commissioners, took to X by saying that the days of the FCC “as a paper tiger are numbered.”
“I’m glad Disney is choosing courage over capitulation,” Gomez wrote on X Friday.
The filing was registered on behalf of KTRK(TV), ABC’s owned station in Houston, which the network said was ordered to file a formal request asking whether the “The View” qualified for the news exemption.
This story originally appeared on Radio World’s sister brand, TV Tech.
