Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna must be approved to stave off the “five-alarm fire” of competition from streaming and tech companies, Nexstar and Tegna said in a joint reply filing posted in docket 25-331 Friday. The FCC has authority to waive the national cap, they said, while all the entities objecting to the deal -- including Newsmax, Free Press and EchoStar -- lack standing to participate in the proceeding (see 2601020025).
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr continued during and after the House Communications Subcommittee’s hearing Wednesday to dodge what ended up being a bipartisan push to pin him down on his position on proposals for the agency to eliminate or ease the existing 39% national TV station audience reach cap. During the hearing, Carr faced continued criticism from Democrats about his media regulatory actions since taking the helm last year. Meanwhile, he encountered universal praise from Republicans, including for implementing the 800 MHz spectrum pipeline Congress passed as part of the 2025 budget reconciliation package (see 2601140064).
The House Communications Subcommittee’s FCC oversight hearing Wednesday is highly likely to echo the dynamics and most of the same topics that dominated an identical Senate Commerce Committee panel last month (see 2512170067 and 2512170070), lawmakers and lobbyists said in interviews. Democrats are expected to again place a major emphasis on castigating FCC Chairman Brendan Carr over his media regulatory actions, while Republicans are likely to defend Carr even more strongly than Senate Commerce GOP members and steer the hearing’s focus toward less controversial matters.
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.”