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Major local TV companies say they have to get bigger to compete in an age of endless digital competition. Now the Federal Communications Commission agrees. On Thursday, the agency scrapped limits on how much of the country any one company can reach through the local TV stations it owns. That gives the head of the FCC a lot of discretion at a time critics say he's acting as a partisan in support of President Trump. NPR's David Folkenflik reports.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Several decades ago, Congress passed a law restricting any owner of local TV stations from reaching more than 39% of Americans through those stations. The idea was to make sure no corporate owner could dominate the news or entertainment choices that determined what you saw on your local TV station and what news got delivered.
Perry Sook is the chairman of Nexstar, which owns more TV stations in the U.S. than any other company. He told investors he was pretty happy about yesterday's turn of events.
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PERRY SOOK: I would say, first, as it relates to the elimination of the cap, which - I believe that vote has occurred while we were speaking this morning, so I think it will remove a certain level of uncertainty in future M&A.
FOLKENFLIK: M&A, meaning mergers and acquisitions. Nexstar is in federal court right now defending itself in a lawsuit filed by a bunch of states over its deal to buy a big rival. The deal would allow it to reach 80% of the country. FCC chairman Brendan Carr indicated yesterday he thinks that's fine.
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BRENDAN CARR: Increased scale could enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted, community-focused news and programming.
FOLKENFLIK: Carr pointed to the decline of local newspapers with huge job losses and even closures, but he also made the case that he wanted to strengthen local TV companies against major national networks.
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CARR: If we move into a world, and I think some broadcasters are, where they are just becoming nothing more than undifferentiated pass-throughs for national programming produced in Hollywood and New York, I think that's only accelerating the decline and sort of increasing some of the secular headwinds that they're facing.
FOLKENFLIK: At Trump's urging, Carr has initiated investigations of nearly every major broadcast network in the country, and Carr's critics argue he's building up local TV giants as a bludgeon against them.
Anna Gomez acknowledges the financial pressures facing all broadcast television, including local TV, but she says removing limits on ownership is the wrong remedy, and it's being done, she says, for the wrong reasons.
ANNA GOMEZ: Eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from that strain. It just changes who is doing the squeezing.
FOLKENFLIK: Gomez is the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC. She was out voted 2-1 yesterday. Gomez says the change means that a small number of huge local TV companies will dictate what airs.
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GOMEZ: The commission's rationale for its action today is that it balances - or it wants to balance - the power between local broadcasters and networks. In doing so, it is putting its thumb on the scale in favor of content that this administration likes and against content that it dislikes.
FOLKENFLIK: Trump has sharply criticized ABC. Carr launched an investigation into the network and its parent, Disney. And last fall, Carr called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be pulled from the air. Within hours, Nexstar, which owns a bunch of ABC affiliates, did the same. Disney suspended Kimmel and then put him back on after a backlash from viewers. Gomez argues the FCC's decision yesterday harms true local voices by giving more power to those big companies.
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GOMEZ: Your local newsroom used to decide what you got to watch. Now that decision increasingly runs through whether it pleases the White House. And without a consumer protection measure like the national ownership cap in place, it will only get worse.
FOLKENFLIK: One more wrinkle, Congress established that limit. Carr says the FCC has the authority to end it. Pretty much everyone expects that question to be decided in court.
David Folkenflik, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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