Explainer | Can Trump, FCC ‘pull’ broadcast licenses from ABC, other networks?

Funny thing about ABC capitulating to tiny little man Donald Trump’s threats to pull its FCC broadcast license over Jimmy Kimmel: the FCC doesn’t actually license broadcast networks.

Your eyebrows are raised.

“We license local broadcasters, so, no, there is no license to pull for the networks,” Anna Gomez, a Joe Biden appointee to the FCC, with a term ending next July, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview on Thursday night.

Somebody might want to tell that to Trump, who on Thursday, offering up another one of his dementia-riddle word salads on the Kimmel suspension, insisted that “licensing” is an issue in the Kimmel matter.

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“When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do, if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They are not allowed to do that!” Trump verbal diarrhea’d by way of answering.

Problem here being, no, Thin Fake Orange-Skinned One, over-the-air broadcast networks like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are not licensed, and if I may, I’ll add emphasis with an exclamation point (!).

Meaning: the FCC can’t “pull” ABC’s license, because there’s no license to pull.

The FCC can “pull” the license of a local TV station airing Kimmel’s late-night show, within the framework of federal law and the rules promulgated by the FCC in accord with authority granted to the commission by Congres.

Those standards are set in stone – limiting the FCC’s reach to matters like obscenity and indecency, commercial content in children’s programming, sponsorship identification and the conduct of on-air contests.

It’s hard to see how the FCC could legally yank the broadcast license of a local TV station for airing on-air criticisms of the political theater being staged by MAGA around the murder of Charlie Kirk, but that’s the route that it would have to take – individual actions against local TV stations in a broadcast network that, for ABC, spreads out over 250 local affiliates all over the country.

“We are governed by the First Amendment and by the Communications Act, which prohibits us from censoring broadcasters. So, no, we cannot pull local broadcasters’ licenses simply because they air content that he does not like,” Gomez said.