Disney will have the law on its side in its fight against the unusual streaming license review ordered yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission, legal experts say.
In 1996, Congress made it much more difficult for the FCC to withdraw a broadcast license, even when it was up for renewal. “Since the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) won an amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, denying a broadcaster a renewal has faced an almost insurmountable burden,” Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior advisor at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, told Ars this week.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a major update to the Communications Act, the 1934 law that established the FCC and gives the agency its legal authority.
“Although the FCC generally acts under the ‘public interest’ standard in granting and regulating licenses, the Act places further limits on FCC actions that would cancel licenses or deny their renewal or transfer,” said Northwestern University law professor James Speta. wrote last year in the Yale Journal on Regulation. The Yale Journal article was written in response to previous threats to ABC issued by Trump and Carr.
The key change in 1996 was that “Congress eliminated the old comparative renewal hearing process, under which broadcasters would have to demonstrate that their offers were the best among others seeking to take over the license,” Speta wrote. “The Act also generally requires that, before a license can be revoked, the FCC establishes, on the basis of evidence, that the licensee has committed ‘deliberate or repeated’ violations of the Act, FCC rules, or its license.”
Early renewal is a rarely used tactic
As previously reportedthe FCC yesterday issued an order order ABC owner Disney to submit early license renewal applications for all of its licensed television stations by May 28. The FCC order came a day after President Trump and the first lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a recent joke that Melania Trump looked like an “expecting widow.” Kimmel made the joke during a skit in which he pretended to deliver a barbecue at the White House correspondents’ dinner.
