WASHINGTON, D.C. — Don’t think the “Media and Democracy Project” petition to deny the license renewal of a FOX Television Station serving the Delaware Valley and the “Cradle of Liberty” carries any weight Inside the Beltway?
Don’t tell that to the founding President of the FOX Broadcasting Company, who has joined a coalition of former TV executives in seeking a hearing designation order for the Philadelphia property — on the grounds that its 2020 U.S. presidential election coverage from FOX News warrants the loss of the station’s license.
Jamie Kellner, who has been out of the broadcast television industry since station owner ACME Communications ceased operations in 2016, has joined Preston Padden, Ervin Duggan and William Kristol in their quest to get the FCC to designate a hearing on the television license renewal application of WTXF-TV, “FOX 29” in Philadelphia.
Kellner’s informal objection, filed Tuesday (8/22) with the Commission, follows a similar submission to the FCC from Alfred Sikes, who served as FCC Chairman from August 1989 through the end of President George H.W. Bush’s term in office.
In Kellner’s view, the hearing should consider character issues revealed with respect to the
station’s publicly traded parent company, Fox Corporation, and Fox’s de facto
controlling shareholder, the Rupert Murdoch family.
That said, Kellner, like the “MAD” group and the other former leaders, are taking aim by focusing on what they believe are Fox News Channel’s “repeated telecast of adjudicated falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election with at least the concurrence of Fox and the Murdochs.”
Fox News Channel is a cable television offering; national distribution of select reports from FNC on FOX Television Stations during the 2020 election cycle is at the heart of the HDO request.
Explaining his decision to support the hearing and revoke WTXF’s license, Kellner said, “I was the founding President of Fox Broadcasting Company — the long sought fourth over-the-air broadcast television Network. My amazing colleagues and I worked hard to establish the Fox brand in television and to help Rupert Murdoch become an established force in American Network television.”
Kellner recalled that while in the role of President of FBC, his team started a news division that provided daily feeds of national and international news stories for the Fox owned and affiliated television stations for inclusion in their locally produced newscasts.
However, Kellner said, “Unlike the news feeds provided today by Fox News Channel, our news feeds did not prominently feature advocates like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell spouting nonsensical lies about a Presidential election.”
Using this as the basis for WTXF’s license renewal denial bid, Kellner concludes, “I have read the Petition to Deny the license renewal application of Fox Station [WTXF]-TV, Philadelphia, filed by the Media and Democracy Project. I completely agree that if the character requirement for broadcast licensees is to have any meaning, the FCC must designate the application for a hearing to evaluate the Murdochs’/Fox’s character qualifications to operate [WTXF] on the public airwaves.”
Kellner’s informal objection incorrectly refers to WTXF-TV as “WTFX” twice in its concluding paragraph.
Kellner is also a former Chairman/CEO of Turner Broadcasting System. He spent seven years at Fox Broadcasting Company, followed by an additional seven-year run as the head of the WB television network, a predecessor to The CW Network.
