No, the FCC Can NOT “Revoke” CBS’s “Broadcast License”

Nazi States of America dictator Donald Trump is, of course, lying about CBS News “deceptively editing” an interview with Kamala Harris.  I’m not going to bother detailing that fact; it’s already been proven multiple times over by CBS themselves and numerous other commentators.  But that’s why Der Dummenfuhrer has been attacking CBS as a furtherance of his efforts to trample the First Amendment.  He already got ABC News to roll over for him in a settlement that ABC should have rejected outright.  Now it’s CBS’s turn, and the Harris interview is a convenient excuse — even though that excuse is a blatant lie.

Now, we need to talk about current FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who was appointed to the commission by Trump in 2017 with the sole purpose of making him the chairman at some point in the future.  Carr had previously been the commission’s general counsel, and before that, a legal advisor to Trump’s previous FCC stooge, Ajit Pai.  Pai was made chairman first to simply be a stumbling block; that’s all that was needed at the time.  But Carr is more extreme, and it was always Trump’s intent to have Carr succeed Pai.  That was well known from the very first appointment.

And yes, for the record, former president Joe Biden made the mistake of renewing Carr’s appointment in 2023, in the name of “bipartisanship.”  I think you know how I feel about the Democrats refusing to do what’s necessary because they want to “go high.”  Carr should have been kicked to the curb.  Instead, he’ll be on the commission until at least 2028.

Naturally, that left Carr sitting pretty to be named the chairman of the FCC as soon as Drumpf got back into office, and Carr is now doing all the things he was put there to do: threatening broadcasters who actually report the facts, advocating for the repeal of Section 230, opposing the fundamental principle of network neutrality, “reining in Big Tech” (meaning ending content moderation and allowing Nazism to flourish, not actually regulating the harmful operations of the companies themselves), supporting the unconstitutional and unjustified ban or forced sale of TikTok, hindering PBS and NPR, etc.

He outlined many of his plans for this term in a chapter of Project 2025, including the “Big Tech” content moderation and Section 230 plans, banning TikTok (and all other Chinese tech companies), mass deregulation for ISPs, promote Elon Musk’s Starlink (yes, he wants to give Elno more of OUR taxpayer dollars) and eliminate spending for other broadband modes.  He was the second Project 2025 co-author to be appointed after Gestapo chief Tom Homan.

So to see and hear Carr fully in support of Drumpf’s calls for CBS’s “broadcast license” to be “revoked” is not at all surprising.  He’s not a communications expert, he’s a lawyer and a partisan hack who knows more about finding loopholes to violate the spirit of the law than anything he knows about communications.  The man probably couldn’t even tell you how to terminate a TS plug.  He doesn’t belong anywhere near the FCC, let alone being its chair… which is exactly why he was appointed to both.

All that being said, the media — both corporate and independent — are falling flat on their faces when asking both Drumpf and Carr exactly how they plan to carry out the “revocation” of CBS’s “broadcast license.”  They’re just going along with the idea like it’s a possible thing to do.

It isn’t.  Here’s why.

First of all, CBS does not have a “broadcast license.”  Broadcast networks, television or radio, are not licensed entities in this country.

For example, I could start a company that produces a handful of weeknight prime time shows, shop it around to potential affiliates, pick up contracts with a few stations across the country, start airing programming this upcoming Monday, and just like that, I own a television network.  The affiliated stations have their own licenses, and granted, I would have to tailor my network’s programming to their needs, including making sure my content doesn’t jeopardize their licenses.  But my network itself needs no license to operate.

I could buy a station of my own, as well, and that would be a broadcast license that the network holds.  If my network’s news department did something to piss off the powers that be, then sure, they could come after that license to punish me.  It would be a blatant First Amendment violation, I would dare them to send the FBI to take away my transmitter, and then I would beat their asses in court, but that’s how they would have to try to come after me.  Going after the affiliates?  Good luck getting them all taken off the air.  Not gonna happen… for exactly the same reason they wouldn’t get my O&O station off the air.

So let’s apply that same principle to CBS.  Paramount does currently own 29 TV stations through its CBS News and Stations subsidiary.  15 of those carry the CBS network (14 if you count the simulcast of WCCO and KCCW, both in the Minneapolis market, as one station), 11 are non-affiliate indie stations, 2 are CW stations, and one is a low-power station in Indianapolis that carries the Start TV programming service typically found on subchannels.

But those are just the CBS O&O’s.

The affiliates make up the bulk of the network.  These are the stations owned by other companies that sign contracts to carry CBS network programming.  There are 226 CBS affiliate stations in the United States, plus one each in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Bermuda, and St. Vincent, for a total of 230 affiliate stations globally, two of which are outside the FCC’s jurisdiction.

The majority of the affiliates are owned by the biggest broadcasting corporations in the country: Nexstar Media Group, Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, E.W. Scripps Company, Allen Media Broadcasting, TEGNA, Hearst Television, Cox Media Group, Weigel Broadcasting, Graham Media Group, Mission Broadcasting… companies that aren’t going to put up with some punk at the FCC telling them to turn in their license simply because they carry CBS programming, or telling them that they can’t carry CBS programming anymore because reasons.

In other words, the FCC could illegally and unconstitutionally revoke the licenses of the CBS O&O’s, but the O&O’s are not the majority of the network, the affiliates are, and there’s less than a snowball’s chance in Hell of the FCC revoking their licenses or forcing them to affiliate with another network.  Just is not going to happen.

Additionally, let’s say the FCC did revoke the O&O licenses.  Guess what’s going to happen then.  Either some other company is going to apply for the allocation, acquire the assets from CBS, then affiliate with CBS themselves to fill the gap in the market, OR, an existing station in the market is going to affiliate with CBS on one of their subchannels to meet the local demand for the network’s programming.

There are two great examples of that which come from my hometown of Miami; one in the early days of television, and one that’s playing out right now as I’m writing this.

Let’s start in 1953.  The original ABC affiliate in South Florida was WITV in Fort Lauderdale.  It was plagued by two major problems.  For one, it was channel 17.  That’s on the UHF band.  This was at a time when most people didn’t have a TV that tuned above channel 13, because Congress had not yet required television set manufacturers to include the UHF channels.  There were external UHF tuners available, but it was a bit of a catch-22: there were so few UHF stations on the air because so few people had the equipment to watch UHF channels, so there was so little demand for the equipment to watch the UHF channels because there were so few UHF stations on the air.

To add insult to injury, WITV was always only a secondary ABC affiliate.  Miami’s WTVJ (channel 4, a VHF station) was the first TV station in all of Florida.  Despite being a CBS affiliate first and foremost, WTVJ also carried NBC, ABC, and DuMont programming since they were literally the only TV station in the entire state when they signed on in 1949.  Thus, for almost the entirety of WITV’s existence, WTVJ had the first right of refusal.  They could claim any ABC programming that they wanted, and WITV was left with whatever WTVJ didn’t bother picking up.

As a result, WITV never broke even.  They had limited network programming, they sure as hell weren’t going to beat WTVJ’s Ralph Renick at news coverage (that man practically invented television news), and even an effort made to move to channel 6 failed.  So ABC technically had an affiliate in the market as early as 1953, but nobody was watching it.

The death blow came in 1957, when National Airlines decided to put a new VHF station on the air: WPST, channel 10.  ABC naturally saw this as an opportunity: they could have their own VHF affiliate and not have to put up with WTVJ picking and choosing which of their shows to air.  So they terminated their affiliation with WITV and signed a contract with WPST.  WITV didn’t even make it a full year after that.

Now here’s where it gets especially relevant to this whole “revoke CBS’s license” ordeal.  See, in 1958, there came to light some “unethical lobbying” and “ex parte communications” between the FCC commissioners and the principals of not only National Airlines, but also a couple other companies that had applied for that license and three others that were opened in the same early-50’s application window.  It was a massive scandal, pretty much everyone involved was guilty — the FCC commissioners included — and as a result, WPST became the very first television station to ever have its license revoked.

But the station never actually went off the air.  The one applicant for the license that did not engage in the scheme, L.B. Wilson, was awarded the license with the new call letters WLBW.  WPST stayed on the air until 1961, when all their legal options had run out.  The courts sided with the FCC, the WPST license was terminated, and WLBW took control.  There were a bunch of behind-the-scenes shenanigans as NAL tried to prevent Wilson from basically picking up where they’d left off, but in the end, WLBW retained most of WPST’s staff and talent roster.

So as you can see — for different reasons and through other mechanisms, to be sure, but the principle remains the same — a separate company came in, stepped up, and filled the void.  Miami has continuously watched ABC on the same station since 1961, and the same channel since 1957.  L.B. Wilson sold to Post-Newsweek Stations in 1969, and the call letters were changed to WPLG (for former Washington Post publisher Philip L. Graham), which they remain to this day.

Flash forward to 2025, and we have a shocking turn of events surrounding that exact same affiliation.  WPLG, now owned by Berkshire Hathaway, announced earlier this year that it declined to renew its contract with ABC, noting that the network’s programming was not worth the money that ABC wanted them to pay for it, especially when the network was just putting all of their programming online anyway, allowing viewers to completely bypass WPLG as the delivery method.  The station determined that they will still be able to generate sustainable revenue as an independent, and they will direct the money they were paying the network into their local news and programming instead, offering things that aren’t available outside of their control.

But what is to become of ABC programming in South Florida, you ask?  Not to worry!  WSVN, the inimitable FOX affiliate that pioneered tabloid TV news with Joel Cheatwood’s “if it bleeds, it leads” approach, will be making ABC its 7.2 subchannel.

There’s a lot of history there, too, and it’s tied directly to the early-50’s licensing scandal.  Channel 7 was originally owned by Biscayne Television Corporation.  They, too, lost their license due to behind-the-scenes manipulations with the FCC.  They voluntarily sold the assets to the new licensee, Sunbeam Television, who owns it to this day.

This also marks the first time WPLG has ever been involved with an affiliation swap.  Every other Big Four affiliate in South Florida has changed affiliations at some point.  WSVN was originally an NBC affiliate, having taken that network away from WGBS-TV on UHF channel 23 (similar to the WITV / WPST situation).  WFOR, now a CBS O&O, was originally an independent station, and was Miami’s original FOX affiliate back when it was on channel 6 as WCIX.  WTVJ, as mentioned earlier, was originally the CBS affiliate on channel 4.  They’re now an NBC O&O on channel 6.  Only WPLG signed on and remained with the same network up until now.

Again, as you can see: a network lost its affiliate, but signed with a different station in the same market to be carried on a subchannel — something that’s happening more and more frequently as the FCC is eager to sell off valuable RF bandwidth and shrink the TV bands.

So even if the Nazis were successful in revoking the licenses of CBS’s owned-and-operated stations (and that’s highly doubtful), that would not take the network off the air.  CBS isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon, and certainly not at the hands of these dumbfucks.

Now, yes, CBS clearly caved in by asserting editorial control over 60 Minutes, which is why the producer resigned in protest.  That’s CBS’s fault.  Stop caving in to Nazis.  You’ll notice that hasn’t stopped this drumbeat of “revoke their broadcast license” at all.  Nothing is ever enough for the Nazis.  You will never, ever, EVER appease them.  On the contrary: stand up for yourself and tell them to fuck off all the way to Hell, where they belong.  They don’t have the ability to do what they say they’re going to do unless you give them that ability.

But more to the point: would someone in the news media and commentariat, for the love of GOD, PLEASE face off with these dipshits and point out that there is no “broadcast license” to be revoked?  Half of you are broadcasters; you should know this instinctively.  You should be educating the public about the processes at play here and why the whole thing is one giant lie.  A giant lie predicated on another lie about “deceptive editing.”

Quit playing along with the liars and start shouting out the facts.