FCC Chair Brendan Carr is moving to remove the national cap that limits how much of the U.S. television audience a single broadcaster can reach, a change that would make it easier for station groups to grow well beyond the current 39 percent threshold.
Carr announced the plan in an op-ed published by Breitbart, according to Ars Technica, saying the agency would replace the existing limit with case-by-case review of proposed mergers. That would shift the practical question from a hard national ceiling to a discretionary FCC decision on each deal.
The fight is not about a dusty filing rule. The cap applies to broadcast television ownership, which still matters to households that get local stations through antennas, cable, satellite, and streaming bundles. Karl Bode, a telecom and media policy writer, puts that audience at about 80 million households.
What the rule does
Current law bars one local broadcast television company from serving more than 39 percent of U.S. TV households. The policy was designed to keep local TV news from being concentrated in too few corporate hands, preserving some measure of competition and viewpoint diversity in local broadcasting.
Carr’s proposal would remove that bright line and let the FCC decide, merger by merger, whether a broadcaster can exceed the old limit. Ars Technica reported that the change would give the commission more room to approve some station groups while blocking others.
Critics say that discretion is the point. Bode argues the move would favor broadcasters friendly to President Donald Trump and could speed consolidation in local news. That is a political claim, but the mechanics are straightforward: if the cap disappears, large station owners can buy more stations without first running into a national audience ceiling.
Nexstar is the immediate test case
Carr has already shown how he wants to handle the limit. In March, he granted Nexstar Media Group a waiver tied to its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, according to Ars Technica. Bode wrote that the deal would allow the combined company to reach more than half of U.S. households.
That waiver sits at the center of the broader dispute. If the FCC can waive the cap for one major deal and then replace the rule with discretionary review, the 39 percent limit becomes more of a speed bump than a barrier.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, says the commission does not have that authority. In a public statement, Gomez said Congress put the 39 percent national ownership cap into federal law, and that only Congress can raise or eliminate it. She accused the FCC of preparing an unlawful handoff of public airwaves to large corporate owners.
Gomez also warned that loosening the cap would hurt local newsrooms, reduce community reporting, and raise costs for families that rely on local stations for news and emergency alerts.
The legal fight is now baked in
The likely next step is litigation. Bode expects lawsuits over the move, though he argues that court fights could run long enough for major transactions such as Nexstar’s Tegna deal to close. He also speculates that future regulators may be reluctant to unwind completed mergers.
The FCC has not merely proposed a technical edit. Carr is trying to change who decides the size of national broadcast owners: Congress through a statutory cap, or the FCC through case-by-case permission slips. Gomez says the law answers that question already. Carr is betting the commission can make a different one stick.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
