The National Association of Broadcasters has endorsed the FCC’s plan to eliminate the 39% national television ownership cap, with President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt arguing the change is needed to spare local broadcast television the same contraction that has hit the newspaper industry.
In a July 21, blog post, LeGeyt wrote: “We have already watched one cornerstone of local journalism — the newspaper industry — struggle under the weight of profound marketplace change while policymakers were slow to respond. We should not make the same mistake with local broadcasting.”
The post closely tracked arguments FCC Chairman Brendan Carr advanced last week when he set an Aug. 6 vote on the proposal, including the newspaper parallel and the observation that streaming platforms, social media companies and other digital competitors face no comparable limits on audience reach.
“This debate is not about giving broadcasters a special advantage,” LeGeyt added. “It is about ending a unique disadvantage.”
LeGeyt contended that greater scale would bolster local journalism, broaden emergency coverage and enable investment in technologies such as NextGen TV.
He did not address whether prior rounds of consolidation under fewer corporate owners have historically produced more local news or less. Research on the question has yielded mixed results, and critics of media concentration have maintained that earlier station-group mergers often led to newsroom staff reductions and heavier reliance on centralized content.
The newspaper analogy cited by both Carr and LeGeyt also faces a complication: the 2017 elimination of cross-ownership restrictions failed to reverse the decline of local newspapers. LeGeyt’s post did not claim that removing the ownership limit by itself would solve the industry’s challenges, but rather that the change would give broadcasters “every opportunity to compete, invest and continue serving America’s local communities.”