The FCC's April 28 order requiring Disney to file early license renewals for its eight ABC-owned television stations entered Day 11 of its 30-day window Friday, leaving 17 days to the May 28 filing deadline. [1] The paper's Thursday brief on Day 10 and the four-document silence named the Microsoft 10-Q + Disney 8-K + Disney 10-Q + earnings call architecture as the operative SEC posture; Friday's Day 11 holds it.
Video Division Chief David J. Brown's two-page order directs Disney's ABC subsidiaries to file renewals "within 30 days — in other words, by May 28, 2026," against original station-license dates that ran 2028 to 2031, and FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's lone Democrat, has called the order "the most egregious assault on the First Amendment that we have seen from this FCC" and "unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere." [1] [2] [3]
What is new on Day 11 is what is not new: Free Press, the ACLU, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have signaled informal objections without filing, no analyst note has pulled the cliff out of safe harbor, and Disney's 8-K still does not mention the order. [2] Seventeen days, and the 8-K is still speaking by not speaking.
-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York