By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) – The chair of the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday that all options remain on the table as it reviews whether to renew the licenses of eight Walt Disney-owned ABC television stations and in its investigation of the network’s talk show “The View.”
Tens of thousands of viewers this week submitted comments in support of ABC after the network urged them to support the company. FCC Chair Brendan Carr said Disney “is running a fairly standard off-the-shelf PR strategy … We’re going to follow the facts and the law wherever they take this.”
The Republican-led FCC ordered ABC in April to file early license reviews for its eight company-owned television stations after President Donald Trump pressured the regulatory agency to take action. The FCC is also investigating ABC daytime talk show “The View” after declaring it is subject to federal equal-time rules for political candidates.
“We’re going to apply the law here. We have not made a decision one way or the other. We’re open-minded, we’ll see what they say,” Carr told reporters after the agency’s monthly meeting.
ABC did not immediately comment on Thursday.
DEMOCRATIC COMMISSIONER CALLS PROBE ILLEGITIMATE
Carr opened an investigation in March 2025 into Disney’s diversity practices and said Disney submitted documents that he felt were insufficient — and that he has not ruled out seeking to revoke their licenses.
Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said the investigation was illegitimate and a pretext. “This is all designed about pressuring Disney to cave,” Gomez said, adding that the agency does not have authority over employment discrimination.
Last month, ABC said the government’s early reviews of their stations were “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional,” and violated the network’s First Amendment free-speech rights.
The reviews were ordered in April, a day after Trump urged ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
The FCC said the reviews, which were not supposed to begin until October 2028, were prompted by the agency’s year-long probe into whether Disney was committing unlawful discrimination, a charge the company denies.
The stations are located in Fresno, California; Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Houston and Durham, North Carolina.
REPEATED CALLS TO REVOKE LICENSES
Trump has repeatedly urged broadcasters to drop comedy or news programs he dislikes or which have been critical of him, pressing regulators to revoke licenses of broadcasters he says are unfair to him.
Trump demanded in November that the FCC revoke ABC licenses after he criticized an ABC News correspondent for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist, in a question he dubbed “insubordinate.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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