The MAGA Plan to Take Over TV Is Just Beginning

Given its diminished state and declining influence, network television might seem to be an odd prize in the Trump-era culture wars. But network television, which can still be received free by any home with an antenna, regularly draws a mass audience on the order of 10 million for “60 Minutes,” 7 million for ABC’s “World News Tonight,” and more than 100 million for the Super Bowl. The stations’ local newscasts are the only form of journalism that still rates well with members of both parties in polls on media trust. President Trump, who spent more than a decade as the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” registers every televised knock on him as a serious political hit. Since his earliest days running for president, President Trump has demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish the networks for any perceived mistreatment by stripping them of their licenses. Few took the demands seriously, in part because they were based on an erroneous premise: The FCC does not, in fact, license ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox—it licenses the hundreds of affiliated local television stations that broadcast their content over the public airwaves, some of which are independently operated and some of which are owned by the networks themselves.