More than a year ago, a grassroots organization formed by a New York doctor and backed by several government officials and television executives filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) challenging a routine application to renew the license of a Fox-owned TV station in Pennsylvania.
Now, one of the FCC’s own commissioners says it is time for the agency to stop dragging its feet and finally decide on the matter.
In a statement released on Friday, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington urged the agency to stop what he called an “intentional and unwarranted political delay” in deciding whether to renew the broadcast license of WTXF (Channel 29), which was challenged by Dr. Milo Vassallo and his Media and Democracy Project (MAD) last summer.
The comments came after Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter to FCC Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel earlier in the morning, imploring her to reject an implication made by former President Donald Trump to withdraw broadcast TV licenses held by the Walt Disney Company’s ABC News because he felt the moderators of a political debate produced by ABC earlier in the week were unfair to him.
While ABC News is not licensed or regulated by the FCC, eight Disney-owned ABC stations do hold broadcast licenses because they transmit their TV signals using radio spectrum that is reserved for commercial broadcasting and regulated accordingly.
Rosenworcel issued a statement on Friday saying the FCC would not scrutinize ABC’s broadcast licenses, noting the agency “does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”
Related: FCC chair rejects Trump’s call to revoke ABC’s TV licenses
While Markey and Wyden’s letters made no mention of WTXF, Simington implied that Trump’s political advocacy in seeking retribution against ABC was basically the same as what Dr. Vassallo and the MAD Project were doing with their objection to WTXF’s license renewal.
“I am pleased to commit to making license determinations objectively and fairly, in compliance with the Communications Act and in a manner that upholds the First Amendment,” Simington said. “The Commission can demonstrate its commitment to these principles by bringing the intentional and unwarranted political delay in the renewal of WTXF-TV’s broadcast license to a close.”
Television licenses are typically awarded for a finite number of years. Renewal applications usually do not invite objections from the public, and are almost always approved by the FCC.
WTXF’s license expired last August, but it has been allowed to continue broadcasting to the Philadelphia region while its application is being considered by the FCC. The agency opened a public comment file for the challenge last August.
The objection filed by the MAD Project has little to do with WTXF itself. Instead, Dr. Vassallo contends that WTXF’s parent company, Fox Corporation, should not be allowed to possess a broadcast license in Philadelphia because of a multi-million dollar settlement reached last spring.
The settlement was rooted in a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over certain election-related misinformation that aired on the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, two cable networks that are operated by Fox News Media. Dominion settled the case with Fox News Media for $787.5 million last April. Fox News Media was not required to admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
WTXF is operated by Fox Television Stations, the local broadcast subsidiary of Fox Corporation. While it is co-owned with Fox News Media, the two business units are run independent of each other.
The MAD Project says the corporate structure of Fox Corporation is immaterial to the situation at hand, because Fox holds the broadcast license for WTXF and Fox had to pay the $787.5 million settlement. The election-related misinformation aired on its cable news channels are proof that Fox cannot pass a character fitness test that the FCC imposes on broadcast licenses holders, they assert.
The MAD Project has the support of several former Fox executives, including Preston Padden, who served as the president of distribution in the 1990s and was often considered to be Fox founder Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man when it came to helping him build the TV network.
In a statement emailed to The Desk on Friday, Padden said he had a high amount of respect for Simington, “who I also consider to be a friend,” but suggested the FCC commissioner’s urging to bring the matter to a close was misguided.
“I would gently remind my friend that the petition against WTXF is based on Fox’s conduct, not speech — specifically the conduct of continuing to present knowingly false news for the purpose of maintaining its revenues,” Padden said. “And, I would remind my friend that the preeminent defender of media first amendment rights, Professor Floyd Abrams, filed his own submission to the FCC stating that given Fox’s conduct, the FCC would be perfectly justified in not renewing the WTXF license.”
Other well-respected media and government officials have also joined the MAD Project in their fight over WTXF’s license, including former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and ex-FCC commissioner Ervin Duggan. Jamie Kellner, Fox’s first president, also penned a letter in support of the organization’s efforts; Kellner died in June.
Those executives have been backed by hundreds of ordinary citizens who have filed public comments with the FCC, nearly all of which are critical of the Fox News Channel and very few of which have anything to do with WTXF.
On the other side of the argument are local organizations, Pennsylvania politicians and major sports franchises who say WTXF fulfills their commitment to their broadcast area through their local news programming and community outreach initiatives. Some of the groups filed their letters at Fox’s urging, according to one supporting organization and two separate sources who spoke with The Desk on background. One source said Fox provided them with a template on what to write, while the other source said Fox provided no guidance beyond their encouragement of support.
Related: Fox says group objecting to WTXF license is distorting facts
The matter is one of several glaring examples of an FCC that, under the administration of President Biden, has acted quickly to propose and impose new regulations on broadcasters and cable distributors while moving a lot slower to issue decisions that are typically part of the agency’s ordinary course of business.
Over the past two years, the FCC has been criticized by broadcasters, pay television distributors, lobbyists and politicians for failing to issue timely quadrennial reviews of its media ownership rules as required by Congress, moving slowly to approve or reject Standard General’s now-scrapped merger with TEGNA and taking nearly a year to scrutinize Mission Broadcasting’s proposed $75 million purchase of Detroit TV station WADL (Channel 38).
