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The FCC has formally moved to eliminate the longstanding national limit on the number of TV stations that a single entity can own on a 2-1 vote that is likely to draw legal challenges.
FCC chief Brendan Carr and fellow
Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty voted to end the restriction that has its roots in regulations around radio station ownership in the 1940s. Commissioner Anna Gomez, the panel’s lone Democrat, argued that the commission’s move was “unlawful on its face” as the current law that imposes a cap of 39% reach among U.S. TV households was established by Congress, not the commission, in 2012.
Carr, according to prepared remarks provided by the FCC, disputed Gomez’s interpretation. He reiterated the longstanding view of the National Association of Broadcasters and others that TV station owners are bound by anachronistic regulatory rules while Google, Netflix, Meta, Amazon et al are able to reach the entire world with a keystroke.
“It is time to restore balance to the broadcast airwaves. Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers,” Carr said in his remarks. “Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming. We should learn from our mistakes with the local newspaper industry, and we should not let the same thing happen to the local broadcast TV industry. Trusted sources of local reporting, broadcast over the public airwaves, are worth protecting and worth fighting for.”
Carr pointed to the example of how local newspapers have suffered over the past 25 years. He and many others point to FCC rules limiting cross-ownership of TV stations and newspapers in large markets as a regulatory hurdle that may have hastened the demise of local daily news publishing.
“The lesson is clear. The FCC kept a rule on the books in the name of localism that contributed to the gutting of local newspapers. Maybe the FCC was slow to see the forest for the trees. Or maybe it just thought the politics were too fraught. It is always easier to say something must be done while doing nothing,” Carr said.
Gomez, meanwhile, issued a pointed statement to expand on why the FCC’s move is legally moot, in her view.
“The FCC’s decision to eliminate the 39 percent national audience reach cap is unlawful on its face. Congress set this cap in federal law, and only Congress can change it. I am not alone in that conclusion. Republicans with deep firsthand knowledge of this issue agree,” Gomez said. “Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has been unequivocal that the FCC lacks authority to change the cap. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who negotiated the 39 percent compromise, has stressed that Congress wrote the cap into law specifically to keep the FCC from changing it. And Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has said he is skeptical a change can be made absent an act of Congress.”
More to come
