Exclusive | Media watchdog doubles down on FCC fight to end ABCs TV licenses

A conservative media watchdog on Wednesday doubled down on its push for FCC Chair Brendan Carr to end ABC’s TV licenses, comparing the network to a “squatter” for feeling an “entitlement” to the public airwaves, The Post has learned.In a new regulatory filing Wednesday, the Media Research Center, or MRC, said ABC’s opposition to the end of its broadcast licenses “effectively boils down to a ‘squatters rights’ argument.”“Someone else may own the property, have the statutory right to license the property, and bear the responsibility to ensure the property is well maintained, but ABC seems to believe it has an entitlement to control the property in perpetuity,” the group wrote in the filing.“But broadcast spectrum is publicly owned, and a license to use it is a limited-term privilege conditioned on compliance with statutory and contractual obligations.”The MRC and the Center for American Rights, another conservative watchdog, initially filed in June urging the FCC not to renew ABC’s licenses.The FCC has been reviewing eight of Disney’s broadcast licenses – including ABC channels in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – after Chairman Brendan Carr initiated a renewal process a year early, accusing the network of failing to cooperate with a probe into its DEI policies. ABC clapped back last week in its own regulatory filing, accusing Carr of “attempted censorship” and tearing into the filings from the MRC and CAR, which accused the network of electioneering, disinformation and excusing political violence.In a scorching 119-page filing, the Disney-owned network warned that Carr’s review of its TV licenses is part of a larger partisan attack on media.“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” ABC wrote in the filing.The network added that conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Republ...