Trump wants broadcast licenses revoked for ‘biased’ ABC, NBC?
Don’t the RGV communities need TV channels like KRGV and KVEO/KGBT — long a mainstay of local broadcasting?
Apparently not, according to President Donald Trump, who said this past Sunday that both ABC and NBC should lose their FCC broadcast licenses for what he calls “biased and untruthful” coverage of his presidency. (Source: Fox News.)
Online, the story is playing out across the national media landscape.
RGV’s Valued TV History
Locally, KRGV is the ABC affiliate based out of Weslaco, with a rich history dating back to 1954, when it started out as a primary NBC affiliate before switching to ABC in 1976.
KVEO is now the local NBC affiliate based out of Cameron County, owned by the Nexstar Media Group, which uses the Valley’s other longstanding TV channel, KGBT, as its CBS subchannel.
For longtime Valley residents, channels 4 (KGBT) and 5 (KRGV) were the only two TV stations available for at least 25 years, with KGBT sharing NBC and CBS broadcasting duties until KVEO came along in 1981 and started broadcasting on the old UHF analog channel, 23.
“Get out the rabbit-ears antenna.”
For the fascinating history of KVEO, go to Wikipedia.org and scroll down the page until you get to “Tierra del Sol Ownership.” It reads like a novel.
Still hard to believe, though, that for years, between 1954 and 1981, RGV residents who wanted to watch a TV show had only two options — Channels 4 or 5.
Years later, though, the local TV names still linger on — Rick Diaz, Darrell Davis, Tim Smith, Larry James, Dave Brown behind the sports desk, Peter the news anchor who won part of a lottery and quit his job not long after, just to name a few, not forgetting the many valued women who played a part.
High school sports, a hurricane lingering off South Padre (where will it eventually land?), morning game shows, old “I Love Lucy” re-runs, afternoon soap operas, news about a local politician under indictment, no matter, people were glued to the screens back in the day before cable TV or a streaming service were even a concept.
“Hand me the remote.” “What’s a remote?”
Trump Wants to Cancel Both
This past Sunday, though, in his long-standing feud with the news media in general, using a broad brush to call most of it “fake news,” President Trump went to one of his favorite spots – Truth Social – and posted the following, citing a study, which he didn’t source, saying that “news outlets” had given him negative news coverage on 97 percent of the stories focused on his second term.
“IF THAT IS THE CASE,” the president wrote in his all-too familiar use of upper-caps, “THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED.”
With a seeming particular animosity toward ABC and NBC, the president also wrote: “They should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!! Crooked ‘journalism’ should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!”
According to a Fox News story published Aug. 25, it’s not clear how the president came up with his “97 percent negative” number, but earlier this year, April 28th, a conservative media watchdog group, the Media Research Center, published a study that claimed that 92 percent of the news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office was negative.
Trump wrote this past Sunday that he would be “TOTALLY IN FAVOR” of any FCC move to revoke broadcast licenses because – according to him – “THESE OUTLETS ARE SO BIASED AND UNTRUTHFUL, AN ACTUAL THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY.”
The president followed up with another post attacking both ABC and NBC as “FAKE NEWS” and “two of the absolute worst and most biased networks anywhere in the world.” (Upper-case letters removed for lack of space.)
Being national networks, ABC and NBC News do not hold FCC licenses for disseminating news content, per se, but they do need the licenses to provide programming for their respective local affiliates across the country – which are regulated by the FCC.
On Truth Social this past Sunday night, the president posted this, pointing his finger at ABC and NBC: “Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES. MAGA.”
Although CBS wasn’t mentioned in the president’s latest social media postings Sunday, he did receive a $16 million settlement from the network’s owner, Paramount, last year over allegations that the 60 Minutes’ interview with presidential hopeful Kamala Harris was edited in her favor just ahead of the November 2024 election.
Why the Media Blast?
Trump’s threats against ABC and NBC Sunday night can possibly be traced to an earlier TV event the same day when ABC News host Jonathan Karl interviewed former NJ Governor and former Trump ally Chris Christie.
The discussion centered around the FBI’s Friday raid on the home of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-combatant. (Source: Yahoo.com).
“I think it’s kind of funny to hear the president talk the way he does about Bolton and classified information, yet, when he had classified information, the same rules didn’t apply,” said Christie.
In response, the president took to Truth Social that same evening: He accused Christie of lying “about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison,” referring to the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal in which several Christie aides and allies allegedly colluded to create traffic jams on the bridge to punish a local Democratic mayor.
The two Christie aides were tried and convicted, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned their convictions.
Christie was never charged in the case. At the time, still a Trump ally, the president tweeted his congratulations for a “complete and total exoneration.”
That, however, was more a political statement than a legal one, since Christie was never charged with a crime.
Now, however, that Christie is a Trump critic, the tables have turned.
The president recently took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to make it clear what he really thinks about the Christie matter: “I always felt he was guilty.” Meanwhile, the president’s call this past Sunday night for the FCC to strip ABC and NBC of their broadcast licenses, which would adversely affect all their affiliates, comes at a time when the federal agency’s Trump-appointed chair, attorney Brendan Carr, 46, has reopened investigations into GOP complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC of media bias.
Just prior to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, those charges had been dismissed by Carr’s Biden-appointed predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel, the first female to serve in that position.
According to a story published by Time Magazine (time.com) Aug. 25, 2025, which carried the headline — “Trump threatens NBC and ABC. Here’s why he can’t revoke their licenses” — revoking a broadcast license isn’t as easy as it may sound, despite what the president may post on Truth Social: Broadcast stations can violate FCC rules if they knowingly publish false information which then results in “substantial public harm” that was “foreseeable,” or if direct evidence shows them intentionally “rigging or slanting” the news, the agency says. But the FCC also generally does not engage with complaints alleging “one-sided news reports or comments,” it says, because doing so would be “inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own.”
The times, though, seem to have changed.
According to the same “Time” story: Current FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who proposed moves to reshape the agency in conservative policy playbook Project 2025, has in contrast supported Trump’s call for the revocation of the three major broadcast networks’ licenses.