President-elect Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent Disney CEO Bob Iger a letter warning that he would be “monitoring” ABC’s negotiations with local stations to ensure they can serve “local communities.”
The letter from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, dated Saturday, focuses on so-called “affiliate agreements” with local stations, which ABC is currently renegotiating with local stations that carry its programming.
“As you know, affiliate agreements establish the contractual terms that govern many features of ABC’s relationship with the dozens of licensed local broadcast TV stations across the country,” Carr wrote in the letter, posted on the social platform X by CNN’s Brian Stelter on Monday.
Carr noted these deals included the rights to ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight with David Muir, NFL football and Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, setting the terms for how much local outlets pay for ABC content.
Carr cited reporting that some ABC affiliate agreements were set to expire by the year’s end without new deals, and suggested local viewers could pay the price.
“My understanding is that ABC is attempting to extract onerous financial and operational concessions from local broadcast TV stations under the threat of terminating long-held affiliations, which could result in blackouts and other harms to local consumers of broadcast news and content,” he added.