Carr: FCC to ax national television ownership cap

Currently at 39 percent; radio is likely next

In news that will certainly prompt a legal challenge, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced Wednesday morning the agency will vote on August 6 to eliminate the 39 percent national television ownership cap, despite Congress having the final say on whether or not to do so. Instead of relying on the cap, the agency will evaluate individual station deals, and determine them on a case-by-case basis, no matter what kind of reach a single broadcaster has. 

With the FCC at just three members – two Republican and one Democrat, the motion is expected to sail through, but their action is likely unlawful since the FCC only has the authority to raise or reduce the cap – not eliminate it. By law, Congress is the only body that can eliminate the station ownership cap. 

Carr insists the move is necessary so local stations can compete with well-funded big tech interests. But he also blamed big, blue-voting cities such as New York and Los Angeles for controlling too much of what America watches. “New York and Hollywood interests have steamrolled those local TV stations and the broader media market in recent years in ways that run directly counter to the regulatory framework that Congress and the FCC put in place,” Carr wrote on Breitbart, a conservative news website. “Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers. Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming.”

The news is a huge boon for two broadcasters – WGN-TV and WGN-AM owner Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting, with each having strong ties to the Trump Administration, who supports deregulation of the television business. Nexstar has a deal to buy rival Tegna, giving them 80 percent coverage across the country, but is being held up in the courts over antitrust issues with a similar scenario likely to play out with the Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount merger. 

Some conservatives and the National Association of Broadcasters have long wanted to get rid of the cap; they believe the regulations are hamstringing them, as they point out that other platforms – first cable and satellite and now streaming – doesn’t face those kind of rules. 

Opposition to the changes came swift after they were announced. Already hit hard by cord-cutting, cable and satellite companies would have to fork out more to broadcasters, which could raise prices for consumers and more blackouts, who are cord-cutting for that very same reason. One of the leading proponents is DirecTV, which is suing to stop the Nexstar-Tegna merger, as is the lone FCC Democrat on the comission, Anna Gomez.

“This unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for the American families who depend on local stations for news and emergency alerts,” Gomez said. “A free and diverse media landscape depends on real limits on how much of the public airwaves any one company can control, and this FCC is now poised to allow local broadcasters to sell those airwaves off to the highest bidder. Congress set the 39 percent national ownership cap in federal law, and only Congress has the authority to raise or eliminate it. The Commission cannot waive away that limit simply because these corporate behemoths want to get out from under it.

And not all conservatives are on board – Chris Ruddy, who is CEO of right-leaning news network Newsmax also opposes lifting the cap, as other conservatives have long feared CBS, NBC, and ABC  with their alleged liberal bias, could also buy up stations.

The impact of this move would be far-reaching. With the ownership caps gone, the agency will likely turn to radio next, which varies by market size and how many stations they have. In Chicago and other large markets, no local broadcaster can own more than eight stations total, with no more than five on either band (AM or FM.) In recent weeks, Cumulus CEO Mary Berner met with Carr to talk about about eliminating the ownership caps in that medium. 

The interesting thing about what Carr said is what a few broadcasters have done in recent months to contradict the claims he and others are making. In February, Nexstar laid-off journalists at its big-market stations, including nine at WGN-TV, who replaced a skilled political expert and his weekly Sunday morning program with a shrill, worthless nightly fifteen-minute political show. Just last week, Sinclair CBS affiliate WKRC Cincinnati announced it was canceling its weekend morning newscasts in a cost-cutting move, and eliminated seven positions. And we’ve seen all too well what radio has done over the last two decades, as iHeart recently went through another round of layoffs. The Nexstar-Tegna merger would eliminate local news voices in St. Louis as a news voice was already eliminated in Indianapolis, where Scripps’ WRTV was sold to Circle City Broadcasting, owner of WISH-TV. As history has shown us, companies generally eliminate jobs – not increase them when companies are allowed to buy up their competition, as we may see with Warner-Paramount as these type of transactions create tons of debt. 

And we have seen this north of the border, where as reported here last week, Rogers closed six radio stations including all-news AM stations in Calgary and Vancouver, while Corus has laid off hundreds of employees, while its Global Network is planning to shutter local TV news operations in Calgary and Edmonton, and remotely producing its news content for these cities in Toronto – something that we will see more of here in the States – in fact, we’ve seen it already in Toledo.

The “case-by-case” approach is outright ridiculous, as it gives the FCC more power to pick what broadcaster can better serve the “public interest” in their town, something Carr refuses to define. For example, the FCC could allow Nexstar or Sinclair to buy a station in Detroit, but would reject NBC buying its affiliate WDIV, because Trump has ripped the network for coverage of him and his administration. So is Carr’s “public interest” better-aligned with the city that’s 75 percent Black? Or its mostly-white suburbs? I think we all know the answer. 

And keep in mind Carr is going after ABC’s eight licenses in mostly blue cities, including Chicago’s WLS-TV under the guise of “DEI violations”, despite ABC 7’s spotless community track record. The “New York” and “Hollywood” comments are stupid, with Carr thinking NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and West Hollywood liberals will control the airwaves with socialism, since conservatives outside of New York are complaining despite him having zero impact on their lives.

So when it comes to the “public interest”, Carr isn’t fooling anyone, stating it isn’t being served by the ownership caps being in place but with them potenially gone, Nexstar, Sinclair, and a few others can practically buy up stations around the country. The biggest threat to the linear TV ecosystem isn’t Netflix, it’s Brendan Carr who’s letting his boss and billionaire buddies seize control of the airwaves with their propangada under the guise of “local news”. 

Editor’s note: An earlier draft incorrectly stated Nexstar’s layoffs took place last year when they actually took place in February of this year, and mistakenly attributed WRTV’s former owner to Nexstar. T Dog Media apologies for the errors.