The View invoked its late creator and cohost Barbara Walters to fight back against threats from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr.
“I had this idea for a show,” Walters explains in archival footage used in an ad released by The View on Monday, June 22. “Different women, different points of view.”
Classic footage of Walters on The View transitions into modern clips of hosts Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin posing on the set of the ABC daytime show.
“The View has welcomed your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years,” a narrator tells viewers. “Now, the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Viewers, use your voice!”
The show encourages fans to submit an official comment to the FCC in defense of The View before a July 6 deadline.
The View has been a frequent target of Carr, 47, and President Donald Trump’s administration in recent years. Carr has alleged that The View violates the FCC’s “Equal Time” rule by not giving conservative guests and points of view equal airtime to liberal views and guests.
The View has traditionally been classified as a “bona fide news” show, rather than entertainment, which has protected it from interference over “equal time” considerations.
However, Carr announced during a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March that the FCC was investigating The View over alleged “equal time” violations.
“You have Disney out there complaining that The View, and Whoopi Goldberg, is a ‘bonafide news program’ and therefore exempt from the ‘equal time’ rule,” he complained. “The FCC has launched an enforcement investigation into The View for failing to comply with the ‘equal time’ provisions.”
Disney-owned ABC fired back over the FCC’s attempts at intervention in May with a formal petition, which warned that the government agency was “threaten[ing] to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly.”
“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows. Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views,” ABC pointed out in its FCC petition.
Joy Behar Says Barbara Walters ‘Regretted’ Firing Her From ‘The View’
Walters created The View in 1997 and was a key part of its onscreen panel until her retirement in May 2014. The legendary journalist died at age 93 in December 2022.
“We knew her better than anyone,” Behar, 83, said on The View in January 2023. “We had dinners with her, we hung out with her and we fooled around with her. The thing about her is she very much defied sexism and she defied ageism. She was not just a friend to us; she was one of a kind and very important to the industry.”
The View airs on ABC weekdays at 11 a.m. ET.
