FCC’s Carr defends Disney station renewal action, Gomez calls it ‘assault on First Amendment’

The Federal Communications Commission’s April 30 open meeting included a single broadcast-focused item on its agenda, a proposed revision to the audible crawl rule. But the Q&A portion that followed turned almost entirely on the agency’s decision earlier in the week to call the licenses of Disney’s eight ABC-owned stations up for early renewal, an action that drew sharp criticism from Commissioner Anna Gomez and pointed questions from reporters.

Chairman Brendan Carr said the decision followed a year-long investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices and was unrelated to comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner the prior weekend, which drew calls from President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for Kimmel’s firing.

Gomez, in her own press conference following the meeting, characterized the renewal action as a politically motivated response to the Kimmel incident.

Audible crawl rule revision advances

The Media Bureau presented a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would amend the audible crawl rule, which requires video programming providers and distributors to convey visual emergency information aurally through a secondary audio stream during non-newscast programming. The rule covers both textual crawls and non-textual graphics such as radar maps.

The compliance deadline for the rule was May 26, 2015. The Media Bureau has granted seven successive waiver requests covering the entire 11 years that compliance has been required, because no viable technical solution exists for orally describing visual non-textual emergency information.

“This action takes a common sense approach to a regulation that doesn’t work as enacted,” said Hilary DeNigro, deputy chief of the Media Bureau.

The proposed amendment would specify that compliance is met if a textual crawl provides emergency information duplicative of or equivalent to the non-textual emergency information, as long as the textual crawl is also conveyed orally. The proposal responds to a petition for rulemaking filed by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Virginia Ingram of the Media Bureau’s Policy Division told commissioners that if stations were required to use manual compliance solutions, many would forgo the use of visual non-textual emergency information altogether. The notice tentatively concludes that a technical solution to comply with the current rule is not possible and seeks comment on whether the commission should codify any best practices.

Advertisement

“After more than a decade of waivers, it’s appropriate to revisit the audible crawl rule and assess how it has functioned in the real world,” Trusty said.

Disney early renewal dispute

The Q&A portion opened with questions about the Media Bureau’s April 29 directive that Disney file early license renewal applications for its eight ABC-owned stations, some nearly five years before they would otherwise come due. Reporters pressed Carr on whether the action was connected to Kimmel’s joke or to a directive from the White House.

Carr walked through what he described as the timeline of the underlying investigation.

The agency sent its first letter of inquiry to Disney in June 2025 as part of a broader review of the company’s DEI practices, which Carr said involved evidence of “racially segregated spaces” inside the company and allegations of racial and identity quotas. A supplemental letter of inquiry followed in February. Disney requested a 30-day extension on its response, which expired the prior week.

“There is a view that Disney was not forthcoming with the agency in terms of its document production last week,” Carr said.

He added that Disney produced fewer documents in the second round than in the first, despite the second request being broader, and that the agency believed Disney had “artificially narrowed the search.” Disney, he acknowledged, would likely dispute that characterization.

Carr said he had publicly indicated for months that an early renewal was a possible next step in the investigation. He pointed to a similar action taken the day before the Disney directive, when the agency called for early renewal of a station group called Bridge News on the grounds of allegations of unauthorized transfers of control. A third early renewal action involving a radio station is expected, Carr said.

“This was a decision that we made inside this building based on where we were in the enforcement matter,” Carr said. “There was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside.”

Asked whether NBC could face a similar early renewal given a parallel DEI investigation into Comcast that began a month before the Disney probe, Carr said decisions would be driven by the facts of each investigation.

Gomez calls action “assault on First Amendment”

Gomez, who did not address the early renewal during the open meeting, opened her press conference by calling the directive “one of the most egregious assaults on the First Amendment by this FCC to date.”

FCC Commissioner Gomez presses broadcasters on First Amendment at NAB Show

“Calling an early renewal of a broadcast license is a rare step. It happens only as a last resort and after evidence of clear abuse of the trust surrounding that license or a blatant violation of our rules,” Gomez said.

She said the targeting of a station group to address concerns with a parent company had no precedent in agency history.

Advertisement

Gomez cited statements from Sen. Ted Cruz, who said the FCC should not operate as a “speech police”; Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee; and conservative radio host Glenn Beck, all of whom expressed concerns about the action. She also cited the National Association of Broadcasters’ statement that the request was “nearly unprecedented.”

“This is clearly a pretext,” Gomez said. “This is just another part of the pattern of harassment and retaliation in order to bend Disney to this administration’s will.”

Carr, asked separately about Cruz’s comments, said he agreed that the FCC should not act as a speech police but maintained that the Disney action was based on DEI conduct rather than speech. He said Disney would have an opportunity, as part of the renewal filing, to demonstrate that its stations have operated in the public interest. Petitions to deny may also be filed by third parties.

Public interest obligations and the broadcast model

In response to a question from a Washingtonian Magazine reporter about whether his view of the public interest standard had evolved over his career, Carr offered an extended explanation of his position that broadcast regulation is constitutionally and technically distinct from regulation of cable, streaming or print media.

Carr said the public trustee model rests on the physical reality that broadcast spectrum requires the government to grant a monopoly on a given frequency, since simultaneous use creates interference. That, he said, distinguishes broadcasting from media segments where unlimited entrants can coexist.

“Holding broadcasters to their public interest obligations isn’t censorship,” Carr said, citing Supreme Court precedent. “It isn’t a violation of their First Amendment because of that analysis, that mode of First Amendment analysis that applies uniquely in that monopoly.”

Carr said previous FCC leaders had not consistently enforced existing public interest case law and that his agency was applying rules already on the books. He suggested the agency might compile relevant case law into a single public notice.

A Law360 reporter asked Carr about a petition filed by former FCC officials seeking repeal of the agency’s news distortion policy. Carr said the commission had not made a decision on the petition and had no current plan to repeal the policy.

“Policies that are on our books are policies that we should enforce,” Carr said.

Gomez, asked about the same petition, said she believed the commission should act on it but that the chair sets the agenda.

Advertisement

“What we are seeing is an abuse of precedent and also an absolute misrepresentation of precedent in order to go after content that’s disfavored,” Gomez said.

Five additional items were adopted at the meeting, none directly addressing broadcast operations.

They included a Report and Order modernizing spectrum sharing rules for geostationary and non-geostationary satellite systems in the Ku and Ka bands, a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Know Your Customer requirements for voice service providers, a Second Report and Order on equipment authorization testing labs, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on excluding covered list entities from domestic interstate telecommunications service and a Report and Order establishing a USAC-managed competitive bidding portal for the E-Rate program.

Gomez voted to approve in part and dissent in part on the E-Rate item, citing concerns about implementation burdens on small rural libraries, schools and tribal communities. The other items passed unanimously.

The next FCC open meeting is scheduled for May 20.