By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – The Federal Communications Commission could accelerate reviews of licenses held by broadcast television stations, agency Chair Brendan Carr told Reuters, as he intensifies efforts to investigate news media companies and faces pressure from President Donald Trump.
“You can do early renewals,” said Carr, who spoke with Reuters last week before ramping up threats against broadcasters on Saturday. He noted that the FCC has a number of investigations into various broadcasters, including NBC, ABC, PBS and National Public Radio.
Asked if he could seek to revoke any broadcast licenses as a result of pending investigations, he said it was possible.
“All of that stuff is on the table,” said Carr, a Republican appointed by Trump in 2025. He said he thought it would be a “good thing long-term to make sure people understand that there are, in fact, things you can do to lose your license and really help broadcasters reorient their operations to the public interest.”
The FCC, an independent federal agency, issues eight-year licenses to individual broadcast stations.
The FCC has not revoked a broadcast TV station license in more than 40 years.
According to the FCC’s website, the next broadcast licenses come up for renewal in October 2028, but Carr said he could accelerate the reviews.
“The licenses could come up earlier than 2028,” he said. “Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn’t. They could.”
Anna Gomez, a Democratic FCC commissioner, said on Monday: “Early-renewal attempts are exceedingly rare, and the process is so demanding that any effort would almost certainly fail, especially given the well-documented First Amendment violations underlying these moves.”
She added: “The FCC can issue threats all day long, but it is powerless to carry them out.”
Carr has repeatedly said broadcasters must operate in the public interest and has faced criticism from Democrats, who say he wants to use the public-interest standard to remove content that Trump does not like.
Carr said the FCC has an enforcement investigation into DEI efforts at Walt Disney and ABC. He also said the agency is reviewing complaints against CBS, which is owned by Paramount Skydance, over a 2024 “60 Minutes” interview as well as a 2024 NBC “Saturday Night Live” episode over an appearance by then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
The FCC is also probing ABC’s daytime talk show, “The View,” over whether it failed to provide equal time for opposing political candidates, Carr said, adding that his agency is also investigating advertising sponsorships of PBS and NPR.
“We’ll see where they go,” Carr said. “They could land in any number of places at this point.” He said ABC is continuing to assert that “The View” should be exempt from the equal-time rules.
Trump has repeatedly pressured the FCC to revoke the licenses of NBC and ABC stations. NBC is owned by Comcast. Trump said on social media on Sunday that he was “thrilled” that Carr is looking at licenses held by some media companies.
Disney, NPR, Comcast and PBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In November, Carr said he was reviewing when TV stations can opt not to air programming from national networks on public-interest grounds. Two major affiliate groups briefly preempted late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last year.
“We’re looking at lots of ways to constrain the power of national programmers and re-empower local affiliates,” Carr said. He added that there were “things that you could do to make local TV stations feel more comfortable preempting, and impose consequences on national programmers for punishing local stations for preempting, and we’re actively looking at those types of things.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Nia Williams and Matthew Lewis)
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