FCC Chair Brendan Carr has put a core broadcast consolidation rule on the chopping block: the national ownership cap that bars one company from owning TV stations reaching more than 39 percent of US television households.
Carr, a Republican, said in a Wednesday op-ed for Breitbart that the commission will vote on Aug. 6 on ending the cap. If the FCC approves the change, a single broadcast company could own stations with a reach above the current 39 percent threshold.
What the rule does
The cap limits how much of the country one broadcast station owner can reach through its portfolio of TV stations. According to Carr’s description, the rule was designed to stop one company from dominating broadcast media and to encourage stations to serve local communities.
The mechanism is blunt by design. A company can own multiple stations, but once those stations collectively reach more than 39 percent of US TV households, the national cap becomes the brake. Ending it would remove that national reach limit.
Carr’s argument
In the Breitbart piece, Carr said the rule no longer fits the current video market because social media services and streaming platforms let national programmers reach the whole country without using broadcast spectrum. Carr wrote that those programmers can reach “100 percent of the country” without access to the public airwaves.
That is the core policy claim behind the planned vote: if streaming and social platforms can already deliver national programming everywhere, Carr argues that broadcast station owners should not face an older reach limit tied to local TV licenses.
The fight is over whether broadcast licenses should still carry a special concentration limit when companies outside broadcasting can distribute video nationally online. Carr’s answer, as stated in his op-ed, is no.
The counterweight built into the existing rule is localism. Broadcast stations use public airwaves and operate under licenses tied to local markets. The cap was meant, according to Carr’s own summary of its purpose, to keep national ownership from crowding out local service obligations.
The Aug. 6 vote will decide whether the FCC begins removing that constraint at the national level. Carr has announced the timing and his preferred outcome. The commission still has to vote.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
