Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency will vote to eliminate the national cap that limits how many television households a single broadcast station owner may reach in the United States.
The rule, called the National Television Ownership Rule, is meant to keep one station group from reaching more than 39 percent of U.S. TV households. Carr wants to replace that hard ceiling with a case-by-case review of proposed mergers, according to an op-ed he published on Breitbart.
For broadcasters, the change would be straightforward: a number that currently blocks some combinations would no longer do that work on its own. Instead, the FCC would decide merger requests individually. That gives the commission more discretion over which companies may grow beyond the current limit.
The legal fight is also straightforward, and probably coming. The proposed repeal tees up a dispute over whether the FCC can erase or effectively rewrite a limit set by Congress. Carr’s FCC has already argued that Congress gave the agency power to modify or waive the ownership rule.
Nexstar waiver showed where Carr was heading
Carr had already treated the 39 percent ceiling as flexible. In March, the FCC granted a waiver allowing Nexstar Media Group to buy Tegna. That deal let Nexstar reach more than half of U.S. television households, according to Ars Technica.
The commission’s position in that matter was that it could modify or waive the cap. Carr’s new plan goes further by seeking to repeal the national limit outright and substitute agency judgment for a fixed percentage.
That matters because local broadcast licenses are scarce government-controlled assets, not just another set of media properties changing hands. The 39 percent cap is supposed to prevent a single owner from amassing too much national reach through local stations. Removing it would make consolidation easier for station groups that can win FCC approval.
Ars Technica reported that the move would likely help news companies whose coverage is favorable to President Trump. That is an assessment of how Carr’s commission may use the added discretion, rather than a formal standard announced by the FCC.
Carr announced the plan in a Breitbart op-ed, not in a dry agency notice. The politics are not subtle. The mechanics are still the part that will matter in court: whether an agency can replace a congressionally set ownership threshold with individualized merger review because the chairman prefers a different system.
If the FCC votes to repeal the rule, opponents are likely to challenge the agency’s authority. Until a court decides that question, Carr’s proposal is both a deregulatory plan and a jurisdictional bet.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
