FCC Chair Could Make Life Difficult For Media Companies

President-elect Trump’s nomination of Brendan Carr as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is bringing both hope and fear to the media industry.

For media executives, the hope comes in the promise of industry consolidation, according to The LA Times.

Companies such as Fox Television Stations, Nexstar Media Group, Tegna and Gray Media are eager to buy more TV stations to better compete against deep-pocketed tech firms that are aggressively pursuing viewers and ad dollars. Carr is expected to support revisiting the rule on ownership of TV stations.

The trepidation comes from Carr’s open criticism of broadcasters and tech firms on behalf of Trump, who is famously hostile to journalists and outlets that criticize him. Carr, a Republican nominated to the FCC during Trump’s first term in 2017 and again by President Biden in 2023, wrote the chapter on the FCC in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.

During the election, he jumped on social media when Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Nov. 2 episode of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” to point out that the network also owed an invitation to Trump under the FCC’s equal time provision.

NBC obliged, giving Trump time at the end of a NASCAR race and following “Sunday Night Football.”

Carr got the industry’s attention again last Tuesday when he told Fox News that his recommendation on the Paramount Global merger with Skydance Media would consider recent accusations from Trump’s camp that CBS News edited its “60 Minutes” interview with Harris to make her sound more coherent

“That news distortion complaint over the CBS ‘60 Minutes’ transcript is something that’s likely to arise in the context of the FCC’s review of that transaction,” Carr said.

Big media companies are bracing for the possibility that he will do Trump’s bidding when the president-elect threatens retribution against media outlets that are unfriendly to him.