ABC has started running a TV spot urging viewers of The View to tell the FCC to let the show keep choosing its guests. The ad began on Monday, June 22, and tells viewers they have until July 6 to comment through a QR code linked to the FCC’s comments portal.
The message is direct: “The View has welcomed your favorite guests for nearly 30 years. Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Tell the FCC to let the viewers decide. You have until July 6th.” That pitch is aimed at turning viewers of The View into commenters in a proceeding that could shape how the show is treated under the equal time rule.
The issue before the FCC is whether The View qualifies as a bona fide news interview program, which would keep it outside the statutory equal opportunities requirements that can force a show to give equal time to political candidates’ rivals if it interviews candidates. Disney filed its petition in May, asking the FCC to make that exemption official, while saying the show has operated under a bona fide news exemption granted more than 20 years ago and that the exemption remains valid.
Disney also said the Commission’s order to file the petition for declaratory ruling was unprecedented, beyond the Commission’s authority and counterproductive to the goal of encouraging free speech and open political discussion. It said the FCC’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill protected speech. At the same time, the company said it had received the FCC’s order starting an accelerated review of the licenses held by ABC’s owned television stations after the administration on April 28 ordered Disney’s ABC to file license renewals for all of their licensed TV stations within 30 days.
That backdrop gives the ad its force. ABC is not waiting for the FCC process to run quietly in the background; it is trying to flood the record with public support before the July 6 deadline. The next concrete step is simple: comments close then, and after that the FCC’s Media Bureau can move toward a decision on Disney’s request that The View be formally recognized as a bona fide news interview program.
