For nearly 2 1/2 years, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group has been fighting the license renewal of a Fox Television Stations property in Philadelphia, on the grounds that it aired news reports during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle that was false or misleading. The FCC declined to act on the petition. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the Media and Democracy Project and another organization, Frequency Forward, from continuing the fight — this time in response to a Media Bureau docket focused on sports broadcasting practices and marketplace developments.
With the Commission seeking public comments in MB Docket No. 26-45, MAD and Frequency Forward — the latter of which describes itself as “a public interest organization and consumer advocacy watchdog dedicated to promoting greater transparency and accountability at the FCC” — note how they filed an Application for Review on February 18, 2025 and it remains pending at the Commission.
That action was taken after the Media Bureau, under delegated authority in the waning days of the Rosenworcel Commission and by an acting bureau chief, dismissed MAD’s petition to deny the license renewal of WTXF “FOX 29” in Philadelphia, submitted on July 3, 2023.
With the appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC Chairman, a trio of other petitions involving network-owned stations that had also been dismissed were reinstated. All three were from the conservative Center for American Rights (CAR), on the grounds that NBC, CBS and ABC engaged in a form of “news distortion” in fall 2026.
Frequency Forward and MAD argue that, similarly, WTXF’s airing of 2020 U.S. presidential election coverage provided by FOX News Channel presents a “news distortion” argument. That message has fallen on deaf ears at the Carr Commission thus far. Enter MB Docket No. 26-45,
MAD’s pending petition, in its view, is relevant because “it addresses the character qualifications of Fox and demonstrates the lengths that Fox is willing to go to secure profits at the expense of the public interest.” And, in a moment where Roget’s Thesaurus could be of help, MAD and Frequency First assert that Fox’s “cupidity” undermines its public interest obligations — asserting that it possesses greed for money.
First, the organizations bring up a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems reached in March 2023. Why? The broadcast allegations of “rigging the election” were false and baseless, they argue. “Fox was aware that its reporters and news anchors were making baseless claims,” MAD and Frequency Forward note. “Despite everyone knowing the truth, Fox News continued to broadcast knowingly untrue news stories, supported by unreliable and untruthful guests.”
Thus, Frequency Forward and MAD are urging the FCC to take swift action to restrain Fox “before it further undermines its affiliate stations, further gouges Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPDs), and takes financial advantage of sports enthusiasts.”
So how does this all fit into the discussion of sports programming?
MAD and Frequency Forward believe the business of sports programming is gouging the customer … and that “Fox manipulates the system.”
How so? Fox’s bundling of its MVPD-distributed channels “results in higher rates for consumers who must pay for packages which include channels they do not want.”
Furthermore, MAD and Frequency Forward assert that “reverse compensation is sucking the lifeblood out of television stations,” impacting their ability to invest in things such as local news. “Networks, such as Fox, see legacy television as nothing more than a cash cow that should be milked dry,” the advocacy groups claim.
Without mentioning reverse compensation involving other networks, notably The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Television Network (which led BH Media to end ABC network affiliation with WPLG-10 in Miami in 2025), MAD and Frequency Forward focus their fight instead on the Murdoch Family’s 40-year-old network.
What’s the solution to their reverse comp beef? “The FCC should cap reverse compensation
to no more than 15% of what local affiliates receive,” MAD and Frequency Forward suggest. “Such a cap will help protect and foster local content, especially news programming.
The ex parte filing comes just days after MAD sent a letter to FCC Chairman Carr that takes aim at him and his predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel. “You and your predecessor have turned the Commission into an authoritarian agency in which decisions reflect the views of one person—the Chairman—rather than the collective input of all three active commissioners,” says MAD co-founder Dr. Milo Vassallo and five co-signees that include former FOX executive Preston Padden.
What prompted the March 24 letter is the granting of rule waivers by Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone to Nexstar Media Group, allowing it to surpass the Congressionally mandated national TV ownership reach cap of 39% in order to complete its merger with TEGNA — something being challenged by DirecTV and eight Attorneys General in a California federal court.
For MAD, a February 2025 executive order from President Trump that has resulted in his assertion of “unprecedented executive branch control” over the FCC was singled out. It says to Carr, “Putting all this together results in an FCC structure where, instead of an independent regulatory body—whose decisions are based on the collective judgment of five Commissioners (or three, as is currently the case with the FCC) and are subject to judicial review—we now have the following procedure: President Trump makes key communications policy decisions. He communicates these decisions to you, his appointed Chairman, who then relays them to a bureau within the agency. This bureau issues decisions that are not subject to judicial review, and you refuse to act on Applications for Review of the bureau’s decision by the full agency. This completely avoids the obligation to defend the decision in court. This illegal scheme must end now. You cannot be allowed to continue to ignore the other commissioner’s statutory role and play the game of ‘hide the ball’ from the courts!”
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