ABC filed its formal reply brief with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, one day after FCC Chair Brendan Carr publicly confirmed that enforcement proceedings against the network's broadcast licenses have begun. [1] The docket that opened in January as a comment-period clock has become a live enforcement record with a named defendant and a filed defense.

This paper has tracked the mechanism from the start. When the FCC opened a formal review of ABC's broadcast licenses in connection with The View complaint on July 1, the docket converted from a public-comment proceeding into a license-review file. Before that, in June, the paper's position was that the View proceeding was a comment calendar, not an FCC ruling — and that the 2002 Declaratory Ruling granting The View its exemption from equal-time requirements was the operative instrument, not any regulatory letter.

Today the docket has changed form again. The June 22 deadline for initial public comments passed with more than 77,000 public submissions. [3] The July 6 deadline for reply comments passed. ABC's reply brief is now in the file. That is what makes July 7 a dated advance: the comment phase is closed, the enforcement phase is open, and ABC's first substantive defense is a document in the record.

What ABC's brief actually argues is constitutionally direct. The network told the FCC that "The First Amendment does not permit the government to sit in an editor's chair." [1] ABC questioned whether a federal regulator could "override a broadcaster's editorial judgment about whom to interview." The filing noted that "the overwhelming majority" of the public comments filed on the matter support the broadcaster's editorial independence. [2]

The core dispute turns on a 2002 Declaratory Ruling in which the FCC determined that The View qualifies as a "bona fide news interview program" — a designation that exempts it from Section 315's equal-opportunity requirement for political candidates. Carr's enforcement proceeding challenges that ruling: his position is that the show does not qualify for the exemption, and that ABC's alleged failure to offer equal time to political candidates is therefore a regulatory violation. [3]

Neither position is a ruling. ABC has filed a defense, not a victory. The FCC has opened enforcement proceedings, not issued a finding. What has changed is structural: a proceeding that could have been resolved by the comment period closing without action has instead continued into enforcement-record mode. That is the receipt the paper tracks.

The practical consequence — for the 2002 Declaratory Ruling itself, for the network's broadcast licenses, for the relationship between federal regulators and editorial news judgments — remains undecided. Petitions to deny ABC's license renewal were due June 29. Oppositions are due July 29. Reply briefs follow. The docket has a calendar. [3]

What it does not have, as of Tuesday, is a resolution. What it now has, for the first time, is a formal adversarial record: the government's enforcement position on one side, ABC's constitutional defense on the other, and the 2002 Declaratory Ruling sitting between them waiting to find out what it is worth.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin