On April 15, 1964, two black Mississippi civil rights leaders filed a petition with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to deny the license renewal of the Lamar Life Broadcasting station, WLBT-TV, in Jackson (Mississippi). The petition was based on a monitoring study which had revealed that the programing on WLBT-TV provided moderate to segregationist views on civil rights, ignored prointegrationist positions, and, in a community which was nearly 50 percent black, aired only fifteen minutes a week of black programing. This paper examines the WLBT case to explain how the public was invested with the right to intervene in FCC action, a power which before 1966 had been restricted to broadcasters and other media owners, and why, for the first time, a broadcast license was denied for programing reasons. The perspective which such an examination offers is important in considering the three major effects of the two WLBT court decisions on citizen action in broadcasting: citizen action as an antidote for FCC inaction; FCC efforts to increase public regulation of the airwaves; and possible conflicts arising from such public action. (TO)