FCC to vote August 6 on repealing 39% TV ownership cap, shifting to case-by-case merger reviews

The proposed rule change

The Federal Communications Commission will vote on August 6 to rescind the National Television Ownership Rule, an 85-year-old restriction that bars broadcast station owners from reaching more than 39 percent of all U.S. TV households. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, writing in a Breitbart op-ed published Wednesday, said the agency would replace the hard cap with case-by-case reviews that would allow deals exceeding the limit "only if doing so would promote the public interest." Republicans hold a 2-1 majority on the three-member commission, giving Carr the votes needed to pass the measure. The proposed change sets up a likely legal battle, with opponents arguing that only Congress can lift a restriction it codified in a 2004 law.

The Nexstar trigger

The cap has already been treated as flexible under Carr's leadership. In March, the FCC's Media Bureau waived the rule to allow Nexstar Media Group to acquire Tegna in a deal valued at $3.54 billion by Reuters (other sources cite $6.2 billion), expanding Nexstar's reach to cover 80 percent of U.S. TV households. A federal judge has halted the merger pending an antitrust challenge from state attorneys general and DirecTV. President Donald Trump weighed in on the deal in February, arguing it would benefit conservative media. A Nexstar spokesperson welcomed Carr's announcement, saying local broadcasters are "still forced to compete under rules written for a different century."

Eliminating the broadcast ownership cap will empower local stations, ensuring they can better compete, invest and serve their communities with the most trusted and freely available news and information, premier sports and entertainment.

Partisan divide and legal questions

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, called Carr's plan an "unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration." She warned the move "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." Legal scholars have also questioned the agency's authority. Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the Yale Journal on Regulation that Section 10 of the Communications Act forbids the FCC from bending rules around Section 303, the provision containing the ownership cap. Critics have noted that Carr has already threatened to revoke broadcast licenses of networks carrying content critical of the government.

The cap reflects Congress' judgment that excessive concentration threatens competition, localism, and viewpoint diversity. It is not a suggestion. It is the law.

Carr's market argument

Carr framed the repeal as a rebalancing of media power. In his op-ed, he wrote that national programmers, streaming services, cable channels, and social media platforms all face no comparable restriction on reaching 100 percent of the country, while the ownership cap applies uniquely to local broadcast TV stations. "Today, the cap is not protecting local broadcasters, it is preventing them from gaining the same scale that their competitors are free to enjoy," Carr wrote. The FCC chairman said broadcast news needs "a little less Hollywood and a little more local reporting from communities across the country," arguing that the case-by-case approach would shift focus back to local communities.

Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately.

Industry consolidation ahead

Eliminating the cap would benefit large station groups like Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which has held talks to acquire E.W. Scripps. A similar Sinclair-Tribune deal that would have covered more than 70 percent of U.S. homes was rejected in 2018. The National Association of Broadcasters praised Carr's action, stating that decades-old ownership restrictions on broadcasters are "out of step with today's media marketplace." The case-by-case review framework would give Carr discretion over what counts as promoting the public interest, with the FCC citing localism, viewpoint diversity, and competition as potential evaluation factors.