The FCC just voted to let the biggest broadcast conglomerates swallow up more local TV stations, eliminating a decades-old cap that kept any one company from reaching more than 39% of American households. Fewer owners means fewer voices — and more centralized control over what Americans are allowed to hear.
In a 2-1 party-line vote Thursday, Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Olivia Trusty overruled the lone Democrat, Anna Gomez, to scrap the national audience reach limit that has been codified in federal law since the early 2000s. The cap is gone; in its place, the FCC will approve acquisitions on a case-by-case basis. Translation: the commissioners decide who gets to buy what, with no hard rule to constrain them.
Carr framed the repeal as liberation for local broadcasters shackled by rules written before Netflix and the iPhone. "The cap no longer constrains the power of national programmers. Instead, it prevents local broadcasters from competing on a level playing field," he said, according to NBC News. He argued that repealing the cap would provide "essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance for the growing leverage and power of national programmers."
That's a nice story. The reality is that the most immediate beneficiaries are conglomerates like Nexstar — the nation's largest owner of local TV stations — and Sinclair, whose CEO Chris Ripley said on an earnings call he "couldn't be happier" about the vote, according to The Guardian. Nexstar is trying to close a $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna. The combined company would reach at least 60% of U.S. households, NBC News reported. The FCC had already granted Nexstar a waiver from the cap in March, though a federal judge has temporarily blocked the deal after eight state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit.
Gomez called the vote "unlawful on its face," noting that Congress set the cap in federal law and only Congress can change it. "Eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from economic pressure, it just changes who is doing the squeezing," she said. "The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters, they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them."
She has a point. The Guardian noted that Nexstar was one of two major station owners that quickly preempted broadcasts of Jimmy Kimmel's show after Carr publicly criticized it in September 2025. When the companies you regulate are rushing to appease you, and you then deregulate in their favor, that's not a free market — that's cronyism dressed up as competition.
Carr previewed the move in a Breitbart op-ed last month. The same outlets that rail against big tech consolidation are now cheering broadcast consolidation — because this time, the right conglomerates win.
The question now is whether the courts will let an agency unilaterally rewrite federal statute. The answer will determine whether a handful of companies get to own the local airwaves from coast to coast.
