Carr Believes Local Broadcasters Are 'Under-Invested'

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr believes local broadcasters need help because he sees them as under-resourced and constrained by outdated regulations. 

He argues that local TV and radio stations enjoy a high level of public trust—more so than national media or Big Tech platforms—but lack the scale and investment needed to fully serve their audiences. 

Carr has emphasized that these broadcasters are "under-invested in," particularly in terms of their ability to hire local reporters and produce robust local journalism. He believes that modernizing FCC ownership rules would allow broadcasters to consolidate and gain the necessary scale to compete with dominant tech giants, invest in their newsrooms, and innovate. 

Brendan Carr

This, in his view, would strengthen their capacity to meet community needs, countering the distrust many feel toward broader media while reinforcing their role as a public resource operating on scarce federal airwaves. 

A key pillar of Carr’s argument is that FCC rules, particularly those governing media ownership, are relics of a bygone era. 

Rules like the local TV ownership cap (limiting how many stations one company can own in a single market) or the national audience reach cap (currently set at 39% for TV broadcasters) were designed decades ago to prevent monopolies in a pre-internet world. 

Carr contends these restrictions no longer make sense when local broadcasters are competing not just with each other, but with massive, unregulated tech platforms that dominate advertising and content distribution. He’s advocated for modernizing these rules—potentially allowing more consolidation—so broadcasters can achieve the scale needed to pool resources, invest in technology, and hire more staff. 

Carr has pointed to specific examples where regulatory relief could help. A broadcaster owning multiple stations in a market could share resources—say, a single news team covering stories for both TV and radio—reducing costs while maintaining output.