ABC can beat Trump’s FCC license threat if its owner Disney is willing to fight

Disney will have the law on its side in its fight against an unusual broadcast license review ordered yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission, legal experts said.

In 1996, Congress made it more difficult for the FCC to revoke a broadcast license, although it is still subject to reform. “Since the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) was amended in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the denial of radio reform is facing an unprecedented challenge,” Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior advisor of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, told Ars this week.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a major amendment to the Communications Act, the 1934 law that established the FCC and gave the agency its regulatory powers.

“Although the FCC generally operates in the “public interest” when issuing and regulating licenses, this rule sets limits on the FCC’s actions that can revoke licenses or refuse to renew or transfer them,” Northwestern University law professor James Speta. he wrote last year in the Yale Journal on Regulation. The Yale Journal article was written in response to previous threats to ABC made by Trump and Carr.

The big change in 1996 was that “Congress eliminated the old process of re-comparison, where broadcasters had to show that their offerings are superior to others who want to take away the license,” Speta wrote. “The Act also requires that, before a license can be revoked, the FCC establish, based on evidence, that the licensee has ‘willfully or repeatedly’ violated the Act, FCC rules, or its license.”

Early revision is rarely used

Like it has already been saidFCC yesterday he issued an order instructing ABC owner Disney to submit original license renewal applications for all of its licensed TV stations by May 28. The FCC’s order came a day after President Trump and the first lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a recent joke about Melania Trump looking like a “pregnant widow.” Kimmel made a joke on the show when he pretended to be serving a roast at a dinner for White House Correspondents.