FCC votes to scrap US TV ownership cap

The US Federal Communications Commission has voted 2–1 to scrap the National Television Ownership Rule, a long-standing cap that bars any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of US TV households. The move, reported by Ars Technica, replaces the numerical limit with case-by-case merger reviews under FCC chairman Brendan Carr.

The 39 percent ceiling was not an agency preference but a political compromise written into law in 2004, after the FCC tried to lift the limit from 35 to 45 percent. That statute also told the FCC it could not repeal or modify the cap through its routine quadrennial media-rule reviews, a guardrail designed to stop exactly this kind of administrative back-and-forth. Carr’s FCC is now arguing it can eliminate the rule anyway, and promises the new approach will “empower” the agency to approve deals that serve the public interest and reject those that do not.

In practice, a discretionary approval regime shifts power from Congress’s blunt constraint to the regulator’s internal judgment calls, deal by deal. Carr’s public rationale is that broadcasters need scale to compete with streaming services that face no comparable ownership limits, and that bigger groups will have more capital to invest in local news. The counterclaim, from the media advocacy group Free Press, is that the policy change clears the way for national consolidation that can hollow out newsroom staffing while keeping the appearance of local programming. Free Press says it will sue to block the repeal, arguing that changing a limit set by Congress requires Congress.

The dispute is sharpened by the FCC’s recent posture toward broadcasters that have irritated President Donald Trump. Ars Technica notes Carr has threatened to revoke licenses, ordered an early license review of ABC-owned stations, and has described local stations as “undifferentiated passthroughs” for national programming produced in “Hollywood and New York.” Carr previously waived the ownership rule in a major transaction, approving Nexstar Media Group’s purchase of Tegna in a way that would let Nexstar reach more than half of US TV households; that deal is now entangled in litigation, with a federal judge ordering Nexstar and Tegna to stop integrating while an antitrust case proceeds.

Even some Republicans cited in the report have questioned whether the FCC can legally move the cap without new legislation. Democratic commissioner Anna Gomez, who voted no, pointed to former FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly, former House majority leader Tom DeLay—who negotiated the 2004 compromise—and Senate Commerce chair Ted Cruz as voices skeptical of the FCC’s claimed authority.

The FCC’s vote does not change the statute Congress passed in 2004. It changes what the agency will try to do until a court tells it to stop.