The Federal Communications Commission has asked Disney’s eight local ABC broadcast stations to apply for an early renewal for broadcast licenses, a rare move that increases government pressure on the company as President Donald Trump calls for it to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
“The FCC determines that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal, at this time, under the Communications Act’s public interest standard is essential within the meaning of agency regulations,” David J. Brown, the chief of the FCC’s video division, wrote to Disney, ABC and the stations in a letter on Tuesday. “Therefore, Disney’s ABC is hereby directed to file license renewals for all of their licensed TV stations within 30 days–in other words, by May 28, 2026.”
Semafor first reported the agency was readying an early review. The stations include those in New York City; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; Durham, North Carolina; and Fresno, California.
A spokesperson said the company has received the letter and it believes “ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming.”
“We are confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels,” the statement read. “Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”
In an X post, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, called the move “unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere.”
“This political stunt won’t stick,” she wrote. “Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
The agency said in its letter the review was tied to “possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination.” Carr threatened Disney’s licenses earlier this month over the company’s diversity initiatives, and the Wall Street Journal reported the move was tied to such efforts, stemming from a probe it launched last month.
“If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that’s a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license,” Carr told Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on “The Story” earlier this month. “But we’re going to follow the facts wherever they go.”
It is not explicitly tied to Kimmel, who irked Trump and first lady Melania Trump over a joke last week comparing the first lady to “an expectant widow” days before an alleged gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and target the president and his officials. The two called for Disney to fire him.
Kimmel on Monday refused to apologize for the joke, telling his audience that it was a “very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that.”
Disney briefly suspended Kimmel last year after Carr warned broadcasters following the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk; Carr has said he did not threaten them. More recently, Carr confirmed an FCC investigation into ABC’s “The View.”
The FCC licenses public airwaves to ABC local stations, and the renewals were set to occur between 2028 and 2031. Carr told Reuters last month he was open to early reviews — and revocations after investigations — if it meant helping “broadcasters reorient their operations to the public interest.”
“The licenses could come up earlier than 2028,” he said. “Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn’t. They could.”
The agency has not revoked a U.S. broadcast license in more than 40 years.
The letter prompted anger among a flurry of free speech organizations. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression cast doubt on the agency’s proposed reasoning, claiming the letter’s timing “makes it clear these justifications are a fig leaf. This campaign against a disfavored broadcaster violates the First Amendment, pure and simple.”
“The First Amendment requires those in government to be strong enough to take a joke—including ones that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump consider to be in bad taste,” it said in an X statement.
Seth Stern, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of advocacy, said the FCC should not “use broadcast licenses as weapons to punish broadcasters for constitutionally protected content they air” and said Carr chose “to abandon his principles to kiss up to Trump to advance his career.”
“The FCC is neither the journalism police nor the humor police,” Stern said in a statement. “This is nothing but illegal jawboning intended to intimidate ABC into kissing the ring.”
