As Trump eyes new lawsuit against ABC, the network turns to viewers for support

Under normal circumstances, television networks turn to the public in the hopes that people will watch their programs, but they don’t seek political support against heavy-handed government tactics. Unfortunately, there’s nothing about our current circumstances that’s normal. MS NOW reported:

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ABC began airing advertisements on its local stations Monday, asking viewers for support amid investigations launched by the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission.

The advertising campaign comes as the federal agency pushes investigations into the network’s shows and after the federal agency’s atypical demand in April that stations owned by the network seek early renewal of their broadcast licenses.

“‘The View’ has welcomed your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years,” one of the ads aired during the daytime talk show said. “Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Tell the FCC to let the viewers decide.”

The path leading to this point is long and circuitous. After Donald Trump targeted ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, for example, the president’s FCC chairman appeared on a far-right podcast in September and discussed his agency’s role in granting broadcast licenses. Referring specifically to a Kimmel monologue that Republicans didn’t like, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr added, “When we see stuff like this — look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Roughly seven months later, the public got a better sense of what “the hard way” looks like. In April, the FCC launched a highly unusual early review of ABC’s broadcast station licenses. Although the commission claimed the review was related to the network’s efforts to hire a diverse workforce (which the Republican administration apparently finds offensive), the developments came immediately after the White House condemned a joke Kimmel told about the age difference between the president and the first lady.

In an online statement, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, wrote, “This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere. This political stunt won’t stick.”

ABC nevertheless felt compelled to follow through on the review process, albeit grudgingly, alongside accusations that the FCC was engaged in a campaign of “unconstitutional retaliation and coercion.” The same filing made the inescapable observation that the timing of the FCC’s demand “makes the retaliatory purpose unmistakable.”

As The New York Times reported, ABC also noted that the FCC “had not called for an early station renewal in more than 50 years and had never done so for an entire group of network-owned stations at once.”

All of this coincided with Carr’s FCC launching an investigation into “The View,” sparking related accusations of government censorship.