Digital Progress Institute Defends FCC's Ability to Lift Ownership Cap
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.
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Thayer also argued that a simple read of 2004's Consolidated Appropriations Act doesn't support the idea that it amended the Telecommunications Act to address national ownership or that it established a 39% statutory cap. The FCC has clear authority under the Telecommunications Act to repeal or modify the 39% cap as long as it believes doing so is in the public interest, he added.