This week, Disney’s ABC preempted Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after FCC Chair Brendan Carr publicly warned that Kimmel’s on-air comments could invite regulatory action;major affiliates like Nexstar said they would preempt the show “for the foreseeable future.” This came on the heels of Paramount and CBS unceremoniously relieving Stephen Colbert of his duties. You can read these moves as license-law “public interest” enforcement or as survival in a game of political hardball. The mechanism is the same either way: speech regulation through spectrum leverage.
The chilling of speech rarely looks like a government censor with a red pen. It looks like the government leaning on those who control the channels until they stamp out the expression themselves. That through-line runs from the Ed Sullivan era to today. In 1957, CBS showed Elvis only from the waist up to appease cultural and political pressure, a form of self-censorship dressed up as decency.
By the 1970s, the Supreme Court in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 748–50 (1978), upheld the FCC’s authority to impose limited civil sanctions for indecent broadcasts, emphasizing the “uniquely pervasive” nature of broadcasting and the government’s interest in protecting children. By the 2000s, Janet Jackson's Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” triggered Congress to raise fines tenfold under the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-235, § 2, 120 Stat. 491 (2006), amending 47 U.S.C. § 503(b)(2)(C) to allow penalties up to $325,000 per violation and $3 million for a continuing violation.
Howard Stern is the modern case study in leverage. In April 2004, the FCC proposed $495,000 in indecency fines against six Clear Channel stations for carrying Stern;Clear Channel immediately dropped him, explicitly citing “license risk” (see In re Clear Channel Communications, Notice of Apparent Liability, 19 FCC Rcd. 6773 (2004)). Stern moved to satellite, outside the FCC’s broadcast reach, not because licenses were revoked but because the threat was enough.
The playbook persists. When Stephen Colbert drew thousands of complaints in 2017, the FCC “reviewed” his monologue and ultimately took no action, yet the mere opening of a file sends a message broadcasters cannot ignore.
There is another undercurrent that makes the lever even heavier: consolidation. In 1983, roughly 50 companies controlled 90 percent of American media. Today, that same share is in the hands of five conglomerates, soon to be four. Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount dominate everything from broadcast networks to film studios to streaming platforms. The result is a marketplace where a handful of gatekeepers decide what gets aired, what gets cut, and what risks are worth taking. When the government leans on those few, the ripple effect is immediate and enormous.
And the pressure is not subtle (is anything with these folks?) and often comes straight from the top. Por ejemplo, the Executive: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” and “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!” (Oct. 11–12, 2017).
Two structural facts keep the lever in reach. First, the FCC licenses stations, not networks, and Section 326 of the Communications Act bars the Commission from censoring content, yet licensee “character” and “public interest” remain elastic hooks for investigations, fines, or hard-stare “reviews.” Second, the biggest players often have business before the FCC, so the cost of defiance rises when approvals are pending.
That is this 2025 backdrop. Paramount needed FCC consent to transfer CBS broadcast licenses in its $8 billion Skydance deal, and Disney is fielding an FCC probe into ABC/Disney EEO and DEI practices, both matters that keep corporate counsel exquisitely attentive to the Commission’s signals. When license reviews and investigations are live, “voluntary” editorial choices stop looking voluntary.
Without fail, each time the Commission flexes, the safe harbor narrows, and not just for sex or indecent or lewd or obscene content, but for political critique. That is doctrine migrating by practice. The law (Pacifica, 438 U.S. at 748–50;United States v. Playboy Ent. Grp., 529 U.S. 803, 813–27 (2000);CBS Corp. v. FCC, 663 F.3d 122, 137–39 (3d Cir. 2011)) has not changed as much as the willingness to use the tool. The credible threat of license risk is often all it takes.
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From Elvis on Ed Sullivan to Howard Stern to Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC’s licensing power has always been a quiet but potent tool for shaping broadcast content. What’s changed is not the law, but the willingness to use it, and the consolidation of media means fewer gatekeepers and bigger ripple effects. Here’s why that should concern anyone who cares about viewpoint neutrality.