Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy confirmed to us Monday that he will be among the witnesses at an expected Senate Commerce Committee hearing later this month examining the FCC’s national TV station audience reach cap. Ruddy has vocally opposed proposals for the FCC to eliminate or ease the 39% cap (see 2512150046).
Arguments that the FCC lacks authority to adjust or eliminate the national TV station audience reach cap ignore that the statutory text and its history show otherwise, Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer said in a filing posted Friday in docket 17-318. The FCC itself, not the Communications Act, created the broadcast-ownership cap, and the agency has repeatedly revised it, he said. Congress' 2004 change to the cap didn't freeze it in place, the filing noted -- it only instructed the FCC to adjust an existing regulatory framework.
The FCC has the authority to lift or eliminate the national ownership cap, wrote Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer in a blog post Wednesday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. The Phoenix Center’s Lawrence Spiwak made the opposite argument in a post on the same site Sunday (see 2601060049).
The FCC doesn’t have the authority to alter or waive the national TV ownership cap, and trying to work around that by redefining the term “national audience reach” to approve the Nexstar/Tegna deal would be “fraught with peril,” said the Phoenix Center’s Lawrence Spiwak in a blog post Sunday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. The ownership cap prevents a single TV broadcaster from owning stations with a combined national audience reach of more than 39% of U.S. households. The FCC “would have to engage in some very creative economics to come up with a plausible formula that would allow the major broadcast license owners to merge and still satisfy the 39% cap,” Spiwak wrote.
FCC approval of Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna would violate the law, lead to nationwide TV blackouts, increase ad and retrans prices, damage local journalism and cause a wave of anticompetitive media consolidation, said petitions to deny the deal filed in docket 25-331 by Wednesday’s deadline.
The FCC should approve the Nexstar/Tegna deal in part because Nexstar provides a platform for conservative voices and offers conservative perspectives on issues, said the Center for American Rights in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 25-331. “Nexstar’s proven commitment to viewpoint diverse programming and fact-based news validates its record as a custodian of the public interest,” CAR said.
If the FCC acts to relax ownership caps on full-power FM stations, it should take “complementary measures” for low-power FM, said the Low Power FM Advocacy Group in reply comments posted Monday (docket 22-459). “Increased concentration alters the economic environment in which smaller broadcasters operate, particularly those without access to multi-station sales operations, regional branding, or capital reserves,” the group said. The FCC “cannot reasonably credit the benefits of scale without also considering how increased local market power affects broadcasters that lack those advantages.”
Conservatives such as Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have suggested eliminating the FCC’s public interest authority (see 2512170070) as a way to keep it from pressuring broadcasters over their content, but public interest attorneys and academics said doing so would also strip the agency of most of its power.
The public narrative around the deal for Warner Bros. Discovery could affect the FCC’s consideration of Nexstar/Tegna, said New Street analyst Blair Levin in an email to subscribers Wednesday. The FCC “will likely make its decision on the broadcast deal after months in which the media is discussing the reasons for, and potential dangers of, media consolidation in the context of the battle over [Warner Bros. Discovery]," Levin wrote. If the White House signals that it would approve of Skydance Paramount or Netflix buying WBD, it would make the administration acting to block the much smaller Nexstar/Tegna deal appear hypocritical, he said. That issue is amplified if the Trump administration favors Paramount because “it is hard to see why you think an owner of [a] broadcast network should be allowed to consolidate assets in the streaming, studio, and cable network markets but broadcasters cannot bulk up within the broadcast market,” Levin wrote. He said that recent comments by Trump against relaxing the national TV ownership cap and slamming Nexstar’s NewsNation programming don’t make it less likely that the FCC will act on the cap “though we acknowledge that the President might cause us to reconsider our views if [Nexstar], for example, runs a news segment he does not like.”
Arguments from civil rights and public interest groups against eliminating local radio ownership caps are “rooted in a pre-digital era,” said JVC Media CEO John Caracciolo in reply comments posted Monday in docket 22-459. “Opponents equate ownership fragmentation with diversity and localism. Experience has shown that under-resourced ownership often results in reduced local content, fewer employees, and diminished community service.”