@Checkerboard Strangler, being an engineer in that space, had good info on when companies need broadcast licenses. Given what I know now, I don't think my original suspicion was correct.
I think all broadcasters should call Trump's bluff, even the individual stations, affiliates AND the network owned stations.
Call his bluff, say
"Go ahead, yank every TV license in the entire country, shut down every transmitter, watch what happens."
The thing to remember about Trump, and it seems, a lot of his best and brightest, is that they're actually pretty dumb.
The list of FUBAR'd conference and appearances, even rallies, is quite long, among which one might remember the Four Seasons press conference, which was supposed to be at The Four Seasons HOTEL but thanks to Trump's buddy Rudy Giuliani, ended up taking place at Four Seasons LANDSCAPING, right next door to an adult bookstore.
Oh what I wouldn't have given if the bookstore owner had released a hundred inflatable sex dolls.
I don't think key people in Trump's orbit realize the difference between "the public airwaves" and leased private commercial use of the electromagnetic spectrum, whether wired or not.
And if some of his peeps do, it's clear that they are reluctant to let him know because they probably have guessed imparting such information would set off a massive ketchup fest and would backfire on them personally, so they're steering clear and keeping mum. If you can't tell him tariffs get paid by consumers, you obviously can't tell him the FCC has no legal jurisdiction over a content provider.
This is not to say that networks, cable, satellite and streaming are a hundred percent unregulated, just that it's not the FCC's wheelhouse.
Back in the Eighties and Nineties there was a bunch of court cases over "community standards" that regulated when adult content could be shown, and a few other items, and it IS the courts that have jurisdiction over regulating content providers.
But that's not a license, it's a legal ruling about a specific case or a set of legal rulings about a set of cases."
And those rulings are limited in scope because again, these outlets operate on private leased spectrum space and over privately leased wireline networks.
None of them originate content over the public airwaves, the individual TV stations use their content over the public airwaves, which again now serve a minor handful of viewers these days.
In another ten years the public airwaves as we know them for broadcast might not even exist. They will be obsolete.
Once penetration for broadband reaches 95 percent there won't be a need for public airwaves for TV broadcasting anymore.
And I guarantee you if that happens for broadband, cable will be sure to follow.
That leaves satellite which theoretically covers everywhere if YOU CAN AFFORD it.
I really do think all the major networks should publicly DARE him to do it.
And they should make it a TedTalk civics lesson when they do, so that the public gets educated ABOUT the public airwaves and the FCC's role in regulating them.