Over the last year, the politicization of public media in the U.S. has reached new heights. Amid acrimony from conservatives on Capitol Hill and inside the Beltway that both PBS and NPR have yielded their respective newsrooms to liberally biased directors, resulting in stilted reporting, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was formally killed as Republicans ended federal funding of the organization that supports noncommercial secular media in the U.S.
Now, the President of the Center for American Rights — a right-wing lobbying group intent on getting the FCC to probe NBC, ABC and CBS for “news distortion” — is suggesting the Commission should reclaim valued spectrum from any public radio or TV station should they fail to meet their respective operational budgets.
In a 15-page ex parte filing in response to the Media Bureau’s docket on “empowering local broadcast TV stations to meet their public interest obligation,” CAR head Daniel Suhr implored the FCC led by Brendan Carr to act “to ensure that the national networks are limited to their appropriate role providing optional programming for licensees to consider airing and that the relationship is rebalanced to protect the licensees and ultimately the public.”
That statement comes following a blustery attack against PBS by Suhr, who claims the public television organization “has not learned the lesson from its defunding” by the federal government for its choice “to heavily promote a controversial, politicized version of
America’s founding story.” That would be noted documentarian Ken Burns‘ work saluting the United States as it approaches its 250th anniversary as a nation.
To be clear, radio stations airing such programs as All Things Considered and Morning Edition were slammed by Suhr, too. “[G]iven that the President and Congress are elected by the American public, the Commission should ask whether PBS (and NPR) stations are fulfilling their public-interest obligations as licensees when the public’s elected representatives have just chosen to cut off public funding because of their failure to serve the public well,” Suhr writes.
Whether or not programming and content viewed by some as not in the public interest can withstand a judicial review or even a FCC complaint has become the talk of Washington attorneys and media industry leaders in recent months. The bigger concern for many, however, is the existential threat presented to some public media operations by the elimination of CPB dollars.
For Suhr, rather than save these PBS or NPR stations, they should be left to wither away, fold, and have the FCC reallocate their broadcast spectrum once their licenses are turned in. Such an effort would be unprecedented. At present, a licensee that elects to forfeit their right to continue broadcast operations sees the station’s call letters deleted and license cancelled. However, a table of allotments adjustment follows that action, allowing another entity to bring a new station to the broadcast frequency.
Suhr doesn’t even want a non-secular broadcaster to get their hands on a NPR or PBS facility, should it fail. “If PBS and NPR cannot prove a viable long-term business
model as national networks—and if their individual affiliates cannot show long-term
business models in each market—then this Commission needs to consider whether
those channels (i.e., that spectrum) will become available in the near future for other
potential licensees or uses,” Suhr suggests.
That’s why, in the wake of the wind-down of the CPB and the end of federal funding for NPR and PBS, CAR “respectfully suggests that the Commission open an inquiry that looks at the future of ‘public’ broadcasting in that new environment” — skipping any potential opportunity to let Congress or the FCC consider potential legislation that would restructure or reform NPR or PBS, or directly addressing the perceived bias in its news programming.
The ex parte filing also offers CAR’s views on broadcast affiliates and the need for greater flexibility when a station owner believes airing network programming does not serve the public interest in a given market. There’s also reference to a March 26, 2024 article in the Radio + Television Business Report about a survey declaring broadcast television a “primary and preferred live sports source” among U.S. consumers in demonstrating, in CAR’s view, how “companies like Comcast and Disney are caught in a real conflict of interest between their cable and streaming subsidiaries and their affiliates.”
Thus, because in CAR’s view “the availability of” “sports programming” is “an important public interest consideration,” Suhr suggests “the Commission may wish to open a separate inquiry that evaluates sports in more than just the network-affiliate context to ensure a thorough record and consideration of possible rule-making or other policy steps specific to sports broadcast rights.”
Meanwhile, Suhr addressed the “Big Four” prime-time programming in addition to late-night fare as not exactly without bias in favor of liberal themes, painting a red state/blue state portrait of the U.S. that suggests a federal body may wish to police content — something the FCC has consistently declined to do under Freedom of Speech grounds.
Suhr said, “When ABC or NBC produce entertainment shows that push an overt leftist social agenda or anti-conservative or anti-faith story lines, they drive away viewers (again,
especially in affiliate-served red states) that hunger for entertainment that is values-aligned, faith-inspired, family-friendly, and patriotic. The consistent bias on ABC’s
The View, for instance, tells women in red states who voted for President Trump that
they are responsible for putting in office an autocratic dictator. Those viewers believe
otherwise, and because they don’t want to be insulted day after day, they don’t watch.
Similarly, when NBC’s Law & Order SVU villainizes ICE agents or when CBS’s
Elsbeth makes a nun into a murderer, it’s the affiliates based in the red regions where
MAGA and faith-focused voters are concentrated that lose the ratings.”
Suhr did not offer a citation for his claim regarding ratings declines for these particular episodes of the prime-time programs noted.
