Major communications industry trade associations complained about state broadband regulations in a joint filing at the DOJ in response to a request for comments by the department’s new Anticompetitive Regulations Task Force. Like the FCC’s “Delete” proceeding, the initiative is part of the Trump administration’s push to cut regulation.
The FCC should take “a second look” at reclassifying streaming platforms -- sometimes called virtual MVPDs -- as MVPDs and allow broadcasters more flexibility to consolidate, Commissioner Nathan Simington said Tuesday in a Daily Caller column co-authored with Gavin Wax, his chief of staff. “The Communications Act’s definition of a ‘channel’ must be expanded from covering spectrum to encompass digital distribution,” they wrote. “If it walks and talks like a broadcaster, it should be regulated like one.”
A host of conservative groups urged the FCC to repeal national and local radio and TV ownership limits. “Without reform, valued local broadcast radio and television services could disappear entirely,” the groups told Chairman Brendan Carr in a Wednesday letter, which was circulated by NAB Friday. Signatories to the letter included Heritage Action for America, Americans for Tax Reform, the Digital First Project and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Center for American Rights, which has filed FCC complaints against the programming of NAB members Paramount, Disney and NBCUniversal, also signed. NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in a release Friday that the trade group was “grateful for the wide-ranging support to modernize these outdated broadcast ownership rules and echo the call for the FCC to level the playing field.”
HERSHEY, Pennsylvania -- As the FCC eliminates regulations, it will likely employ the good-cause exception to notice-and-comment rulemaking to do so quickly, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday.
Charter Communications wants to purchase fellow MVPD Cox Communications for $34.5 billion, the companies said in a joint news release and conference call Friday.
Broadcasters are poised to execute a rush of mergers and acquisitions if the FCC relaxes ownership rules, but uncertainty about markets, the direction regulators may take and the future of broadcast networks could influence deal-making, broadcast brokers said in interviews this week. The agency's failure to relax ownership rules could spur a wave of bankruptcies, they said. “The industry is crying out for some relief, and it really deserves some relief, because we can't compete with the giant companies that we're forced to compete with now,” Media Services Group co-founder George Reed said. Tideline Partners Managing Partner Gregory Guy said “2025 is the most fundamentally important year for broadcasters in decades.”
Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas and 21 other Republican senators are urging the FCC to “modernize [its] broadcast ownership rules to enable broadcasters to compete with today's media giants.” Broadcasters doubled down in late April on calls for station ownership deregulation as part of the FCC’s “Delete” docket (see 2504290054).
In Q1 earnings calls this week, TV broadcast executives emphasized their expectations of ownership deregulation, hinted at station deals and discussed a recent proposal by FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington to cap network affiliation fees (see 2505020066). Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said on his company’s call that Simington’s proposal for a 30% cap on fees would likely find “very little traction” in Washington. On Capitol Hill, “there is very little interest in getting involved in the commerce between stations and networks.”
The Consumer Technology Association wants House and Senate Commerce committee leadership to oppose NAB’s petition to the FCC on the ATSC 3.0 transition, CTA CEO Gary Shapiro said in a letter to legislators Tuesday. The letter was sent to Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and House Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J. Comments on the NAB petition were due Wednesday in docket 16-142.
What will come out of the FCC’s “Delete” proceeding is hard to say at this point, since it builds on other FCC efforts to cut regulations, experts said during a webinar Wednesday by the Center for Business and Public Policy at Georgetown University. The FCC has logged more than 1,100 comments so far in docket 25-133, with replies due this week (see 2504290054 and 2504290038).