Conservative fight against license renewals for ABC stations heats up [View all]

Source: The Guardian

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.

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