The ads from the broadcast lobby have popped up on social media in recent months: “Thank you Chairman Carr!”
“By addressing outdated rules, he can help level the playing field — empowering local stations to compete with Big Tech. Let’s modernize the rules and empower local broadcasters.”
The messages are directed at Brendan Carr, the Donald Trump-appointed chairman of the FCC who has raised the prospect of a long-held priority of the National Association of Broadcasters: an overhaul of the broadcast ownership rules.
But the praise for Carr comes as he has launched investigations or inquiries into certain broadcast networks, some of their owned stations and other outlets, including members of NAB, over issues ranging from diversity, equity and inclusion practices to newsroom decision-making.
That includes complaints over how CBS News‘ 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris, how ABC News moderated last year’s presidential debate, and another over Harris’ cameo on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, just days before the election. Carr also has fired off letters against companies like Comcast and Disney over their DEI practices. He also launched an investigation against KCBS Radio, owned by Audacy, over its report on the location of an ICE operation in San Jose, CA. Carr also has suggested that Comcast was engaging in “news distortion” over the way that its news entities covered the deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
In the wake of the FCC’s approval of Skydance’s merger with Paramount Global, Carr has touted the company’s commitment to overhauling CBS, including “measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media.” Yet the agency has limited authority over news content and long ago abandoned a doctrine that mandated broadcasters present a balance of points of view.
In contrast to the NAB advertising campaign to woo Carr, the pushback against his investigations has not been nearly as prominent, even as Democratic lawmakers, past FCC chairs and public interest groups have raised serious concerns about private companies trying to appease Trump and his administration.
Nothing has gotten more attention than the saga of the FCC’s recent approval of Skydance‘s merger with Paramount. Earlier this month, Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over the 60 Minutes interview, agreeing to pay $16 million to the president’s library even though the company’s lawyers had previously called the lawsuit meritless. Last week, Skydance said it would commit to an ombudsman at CBS News, a prelude to final approval. Democratic lawmakers have called for an investigation of whether the companies engaged in bribery of Trump to push the merger through, while the sole Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, accused Skydance of “cowardly capitulation.”
The NAB has weighed in at various points.
On November 1, just days before the presidential election, NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt issued a statement responding to Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over the 60 Minutes interview, saying, “A free press must report, inform and scrutinize without fear of reprisal. Frivolous lawsuits aimed at stifling this essential role risk undermining democratic principles and ignore the First Amendment’s protection of how news is reported. NAB stands firmly with our members against any attacks on their First Amendment-protected reporting.”
Earlier this year, after Carr revived a related complaint over the 60 Minutes interview and opened up the issue for public comment, the NAB submitted a filing to the agency that called into question the FCC’s authority over newsroom decisions and said that any enforcement “almost certainly violates the First Amendment.”
Kamala Harris on ’60 Minutes’
CBS
In a speech to the Media Institute in February, LeGeyt said, without mentioning Carr or Trump by name, “Americans deserve the full and fair reporting that broadcasters provide and NAB strongly defends our members’ First Amendment rights and their vital role in maintaining an informed public. Our democracy relies on journalists’ ability to report the news without the risk of government retribution. In a media environment flooded with social media misinformation and cable news politicization, this role has never been more important.”
There’s little doubt that broadcasters are navigating treacherous territory — trying to please the administration in one area and, at the same time, pushing back in others. Some station executives point out it isn’t all that unusual.
But there has been plenty of alarm over Trump and his administration’s use of power to elicit concessions that raise real First Amendment issues — and whether that should be the main priority of broadcasters.
Blair Levin, policy adviser to New Street Research who was chief of staff to FCC chair Reed Hundt, said via email, “In previous Administrations, the view in the trade associations and the FCC was that it was perfectly fine to support some initiatives and oppose others, with no likelihood that the FCC would punish a sector in something they care about just because the trade association was not 100% behind the Administration. Now — and NAB is an example — there is a fear in industry that if they object to anything they will be punished on everything.”
Preston Padden, who led government relations for News Corp and Disney, said, “I have great respect for the people at the NAB and they have a very tough job, but I sure wish they would spend more time defending First Amendment rights of broadcasters as opposed to chasing ownership deregulation that in my opinion is likely to be much less benefit than a lot of people think.”
Ownership rules in play
Broadcasters viewed the Trump presidency as an opportune moment to relax or even eliminate local ownership rules, including ones that restrict the number of stations that an owner can hold in one market. In his speech to the Media Institute, LeGeyt said that “in many markets, communities would be best served by a pool of investment in one or two strong local newsrooms, rather than four under-resourced entities.” Last week, stations got a reprieve via a federal appellate court decision that vacated a rule prohibiting a company from owning more than one of the top four stations in a market.
There is also a push to relax national ownership rules, including a cap that restricts any entity from owning or controlling stations covering more than 39% of the country. One of broadcasters’ central arguments is that the dramatic shifts in viewing habits to streaming, coupled with the migration of advertising to tech giants like Google and Meta, put them at a disadvantage.
One of the big champions of lifting the cap is Nexstar, the largest station owner in the country that is right at the 39% threshold in 116 markets.
Perry Sook, its CEO, has said that “in my 45 years in the broadcast industry, the prospect of meaningful broadcast ownership reform has never been better.”
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook
Getty Images
Highlighted on the NAB website is a March segment from NewsNation, in which anchor Leland Vittert interviewed Carr, focusing on the deregulatory effort in the age of big tech. Vittert disclosed that NewsNation was owned by Nexstar, but asked Carr, “What is the pushback to this, because it seems fairly uncontroversial?” Carr noted that the limits to consolidation has “resulted in all these stations that are underinvested in.” There were no questions on Carr’s investigations of networks or broadcasters.
Another champion of lifting the cap, Sinclair Broadcast Group, has framed the issue as a matter of not only competing with big tech, but also national news. “If the Commission wants to preserve local journalism and ensure that viewers have options beyond Big Media national news and Big Tech algorithms, the Commission must act promptly to unshackle the broadcast television industry before it is too late,” the station group said in a filing.
In a signal that it was considering relaxing or eliminating the national cap, the FCC last month invited public comment, including on whether stations not affiliated with the major networks should be excluded.
“Given these marketplace realities, limiting the scale of broadcast TV station groups directly reduces their ability to compete and negotiate with digital program services and advertising platforms on an even remotely level playing field,” the NAB wrote in an FCC filing in April, as it was pushing for the revision of the rules. “It also substantially hinders local stations’ provision of their most important public service – offering news, emergency information, and valued entertainment and sports programming in local communities across the country at no cost to the public.”
NAB also argued that the ownership cap may run afoul of the First Amendment, noting that the Supreme Court “has long rejected the idea that the government may restrict speech by powerful or influential entities or people because such speech may be too persuasive or may dominate the public debate.”
The trade association also has presented a chart to commissioners showing that as the number of station groups got smaller over the past decade, the number of local news hours increased.
The deregulatory push is opposed by the cable industry, which worries that it will alter the playing field when it comes to retransmission consent negotiations, a primary revenue stream for broadcasters. The American Television Alliance, a group made up of cable and broadband operators, has warned FCC officials it will lead to higher prices for their subscribers to receive broadcast channels. The group also has raised questions of the FCC’s authority to eliminate the national ownership cap, or whether it would require an act of Congress.
More recently, the Documentary Producers Alliance wrote that eliminating the cap “would move broadcasting in the same direction as streaming, which has become a highly concentrated media ecosystem dominated by a small number of gatekeepers who have little obligation or incentive to serve the public interest.”
In recent weeks, Carr, too, has focused on “gatekeepers,” but this time on the broadcast side, as he weighs in on ABC’s The View and CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and crediting Trump’s role for changing the landscape. He retweeted a post that parroted a line from Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify,” as if the FCC will now be monitoring content. To the latest comments, there has not been any public pushback from broadcasters or their lobby.
