NAB calls on FCC to repeal broadcast ownership cap in push for deregulation

The National Association of Broadcasters has formally urged the Federal Communications Commission to repeal its national ownership cap for broadcast television stations, calling the regulation outdated and harmful to competition.

In an April 2 letter to the FCC, the NAB wrote that the rule “prevents broadcasters — but not any other video service providers — from competing for audiences and vital advertising revenues across the country and harms the public’s free, over-the-air television service.”

“For more than two decades, the national TV rule has prohibited any entity from owning local commercial TV stations reaching, in the aggregate, more than 39 percent of the total number of TV households in the nation,” the letter stated. “The time to eliminate this harmful restriction is now.”

The FCC’s current rule was last adjusted in 2004. The NAB contends that the rise of internet-delivered video and digital advertising platforms has rendered the reach limit obsolete. “Given dramatic changes in the video and advertising markets since 2017,” the NAB argued, “the Commission must end this limitation and allow broadcasters to better serve the public interest.”

The association cited support from its Television Board, which includes a range of companies such as Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Univision Communications. “The national TV rule in any form does not promote, but instead harms, competition, diversity and localism and should be eliminated entirely,” the NAB said.

The letter includes economic data to support the claim that broadcasters now operate at a competitive disadvantage. According to the filing, in 2023, the combined U.S. advertising revenues of Alphabet, Meta and Amazon exceeded the total advertising revenues of all local TV and radio stations combined.

The NAB also challenged the basis for the current rule’s methodology, stating that it is built on a flawed premise — that a station reaches 100 percent of its designated market area. “That premise was a fiction when the Commission first adopted a national audience reach cap in 1985 and is an even greater fiction today,” the group stated. “The record offers no rational basis for retaining the existing 39 percent cap.”

The FCC previously sought comment on changes to the rule in 2017, but no changes were made. Then-Commissioner Brendan Carr at the time remarked that the FCC’s ownership restrictions dated back to the 1940s and that broadcasters were increasingly competing “with YouTube stars, social media platforms and streaming services like Hulu and Netflix — not to mention traditional cable and satellite offerings.”

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In the latest filing, the NAB emphasized that the FCC has the legal authority to repeal the ownership rule. “The Commission must summarily reject this strained, illogical and wholly outcome-determinative statutory reading,” the NAB wrote in response to arguments that only Congress could alter the rule.

Carr has described the situation facing broadcasters as a “break glass moment,” calling on the agency to “make it easier for broadcasters to attract the capital necessary for them to invest, compete and serve their local communities.”

As of April, the FCC had not announced whether it would act on the NAB’s request.