The FCC has formally moved to eliminate the longstanding national limit on the number of TV stations that a single entity can own on a 2-1 vote that is likely to draw legal challenges.
FCC chief Brendan Carr and fellow Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty voted to end the restriction that has its roots in regulations around radio station ownership in the 1940s. Commissioner Anna Gomez, the panel’s lone Democrat, argued that the commission’s move was “unlawful on its face” as the current law that imposes a cap of 39% reach among U.S. TV households was established by Congress, not the commission, in 2012.
Carr, according to prepared remarks provided by the FCC, disputed Gomez’s interpretation. He reiterated the longstanding view of the National Association of Broadcasters and others that TV station owners are bound by anachronistic regulatory rules while the likes of Google, Netflix, Meta and Amazon are able to reach the entire world with a keystroke.
“It is time to restore balance to the broadcast airwaves. Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers,” Carr said in his remarks. “Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming. We should learn from our mistakes with the local newspaper industry, and we should not let the same thing happen to the local broadcast TV industry. Trusted sources of local reporting, broadcast over the public airwaves, are worth protecting and worth fighting for.”
Carr pointed to the example of how local newspapers have suffered over the past 25 years. He and many others point to FCC rules limiting cross-ownership of TV stations and newspapers in large markets as a regulatory hurdle that may have hastened the demise of local daily news publishing.
“The lesson is clear. The FCC kept a rule on the books in the name of localism that contributed to the gutting of local newspapers. Maybe the FCC was slow to see the forest for the trees. Or maybe it just thought the politics were too fraught. It is always easier to say something must be done while doing nothing,” Carr said.
Gomez, meanwhile, issued a pointed statement to expand on why the FCC’s move is legally moot, in her view.
“The FCC’s decision to eliminate the 39% national audience reach cap is unlawful on its face. Congress set this cap in federal law, and only Congress can change it. I am not alone in that conclusion. Republicans with deep firsthand knowledge of this issue agree,” Gomez said. “Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has been unequivocal that the FCC lacks authority to change the cap. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who negotiated the 39 percent compromise, has stressed that Congress wrote the cap into law specifically to keep the FCC from changing it. And Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has said he is skeptical a change can be made absent an act of Congress.”
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One of the biggest advocates for the FCC’s elimination of the cap has been Nexstar, whose acquisition of TV station group rival Tegna would give the combined company reach across 80% of U.S. television households. The Nexstar-Tegna deal suffered a legal defeat in April 2026 when a court issued an injunction halting the companies from continuing with their merger integration in a lawsuit filed by eight state attorneys general. A trial in the case is scheduled to begin July 6, 2027. Meanwhile, Nexstar has filed an appeal asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to narrow the scope of the preliminary injunction and dismiss the state plaintiffs; oral argument in the appeal is anticipated to be heard in the fourth quarter of 2026.
In a statement Thursday, Nexstar chief communications officer Gary Weitman said: “The FCC’s decision to eliminate the broadcast ownership cap is a welcome, necessary and long-overdue recognition of today’s competitive landscape, which is dominated by legacy Big Media and Big Tech. For too long, local broadcasters were handcuffed from reaching the scale they needed to compete on a more level playing field by outdated federal rules that didn’t apply to the largest and most powerful companies like Google’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram or Netflix. Modernizing these rules will help ensure broadcasters can continue investing in local journalism and providing the free, trusted news and information that communities across America rely on every day.”
Slaying the cap once and for all has been a longstanding goal of the National Association of Broadcasters, the largest U.S. lobbying organization for broadcasters. Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of NAB, cheered the news Thursday morning.
“The FCC’s decision to eliminate the outdated national television ownership cap marks a generational step toward strengthening local stations and ensuring they can compete in today’s media marketplace,” said LeGeyt. “We applaud Chairman Carr and the Commission for recognizing that rules adopted decades ago should not constrain local broadcasters’ ability to invest in journalism, innovation and service to their communities. Today the FCC helped level the playing field and strengthen local stations’ ability to deliver the trusted news and emergency information millions of Americans rely on.”
Chris Ripley, CEO of Sinclair — which is the second-biggest TV station owner after Nexstar — said on the company’s Aug. 5 earnings call that the FCC’s removal of the national ownership cap is “a development that the industry has been supporting for many years.”
Ripley told analysts that “we fully expect people to challenge this order” but said, “We think the FCC… is on solid legal ground here in terms of their authority to change this rule and the rationale behind changing it in terms of the FCC’s mandate is to deregulate over time. That was the mandate from Congress, as conditions change, and that’s what’s happening here. So we’ll be able to transact under this new rule shortly after the vote happens as soon as it gets into the federal registry.”
In the fall of 2025, Sinclair made an unsolicited takeover offer for Scripps. The board of Scripps rejected Sinclair’s hostile bid in December. Sinclair operates and/or provides services to 185 TV stations in 85 markets, while Scripps has more than 60 stations in 40-plus markets.
Meanwhile, the American Television Alliance (ATVA), a lobbying group composed of cable, satellite, telco operators and independent programmers, slammed the FCC’s vote on the TV ownership cap.
“The FCC’s decision to eliminate the national broadcast ownership cap is a serious setback for American consumers and local communities,” ATVA spokesman Hunter Wilson said. “Congress established the 39% national ownership cap in 2004 to protect localism, viewpoint diversity and consumer choice. By eliminating this safeguard, the FCC has ignored Congressional intent and opened the door to unchecked ‘Big Broadcast’ consolidation that will drive up costs for viewers and reduce local news programming.”
