GoKawiilThe Federal Communications Commission will vote to repeal the National Television Ownership Rule that is supposed to prevent a single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. The proposed change sets up a likely court battle over the FCC claim that it has authority to repeal a limit set by Congress.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has already treated the rule as more of a suggestion. In March, the Carr FCC granted a waiver allowing Nexstar Media Group to buy Tegna in a deal that let it reach over half of TV households. The Carr FCC argued that Congress gave it authority to modify or waive the rule.
Carr now plans to repeal the 39 percent limit and replace it with a “case-by-case review” of each proposed merger, the chairman announced today in an op-ed published on Breitbart. The change would make it easier for the FCC to pick and choose which station groups get to surpass the limit. Under Carr, this would likely benefit news companies that provide favorable coverage for President Trump.
“Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately,” Carr wrote in Breitbart, noting that trust of media “is even lower among Republicans.” Carr alleged that many local broadcast TV stations are “turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood.”
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Last year, when Carr threatened ABC affiliates with license revocations for carrying Jimmy Kimmel’s show, he said that national networks exert too much control over local TV stations and that he’s trying “to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of the local communities.” Carr has praised Trump for “fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” and used his post at the FCC to exert pressure on news organizations that Trump doesn’t like. Nexstar helped Carr’s campaign against Kimmel by temporarily refusing to air the show on its stations.