Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is signaling in a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger that he plans to take a heavy-handed approach toward the corporate owners of TV stations and networks upon assuming leadership of the agency in January.
CNN Business reports that Carr, in addressing Disney-owned ABC’s negotiations with its affiliated stations, appears to be constructing his threats around a recent legal settlement that ABC made with President-elect Trump.
“Dear Mr. Iger, Americans no longer trust the national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly,” reads the letter, which was acquired by CNN. Citing polling data, Carr writes that “ABC’s own conduct has certainly contributed to this erosion in public trust. For instance, ABC News recently agreed to pay $15 million to President Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and an additional $1 million in attorney fees to settle a defamation case.”
Carr simultaneously notes that “Americans largely hold positive views of their local media outlets” while advocating for more local programming.
CNN’s report says Carr’s emphasis on the national media’s trust deficit, along with his decision to write to Iger, demonstrates that Carr’s priorities break with tradition.
“Instead of, say, the digital divide, Carr has highlighted Republican allegations of Big Tech censorship,” CNN writes. “And now he has advanced Trump’s criticism of ABC — albeit in a much more polite way. He seems happy to accept criticism for using his FCC position and X profile as a bully pulpit.”
Disney is subject to FCC regulation in several areas, including station licensing. During the presidential campaign, Trump said publicly he wanted ABC and other broadcasters to lose their licenses. The FCC also oversees retransmission consent, where cable distributors pay local stations to retransmit their signals.
In September, Disney-owned channels were blacked out from DirecTV for two weeks. Retransmission consent was a component of the standoff.
“The approach that ABC is apparently taking in these negotiations concerns me,” Carr says in the letter to Iger. “My understanding is that ABC is attempting to extract onerous financial and operational concessions from local broadcast TV stations under the threat of terminating long-held affiliations, which could result in blackouts and other harms to local consumers of broadcast news and content.”
Carr says he will be “monitoring the outcome” of ABC’s negotiations “to ensure that those negotiations enable local broadcast TV stations to meet their federal obligations and serve the needs of their local communities.”