a local media blogger<\/a> and former CW39 reporter, said the industry-wide decline was a major factor in the carousel of hires and departures at Houston-area stations over the past few years.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
![\"Ron]()
<\/p>\n
Ron Bansett ,an engineer at KHOU-TV runs sound checks in the control room Friday, Feb. 2, 2007, at KHOU-TV building in Houston.<\/p>\n
Nick de la Torre\/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“Houston is probably more stable than a smaller market, but still it’s not as stable as it used to be,”\u00a0McGuff said. “(Employees) are moving around a lot more, and looking to get out as the stability goes away.”<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, in a move celebrated by\u00a0Nexstar, the FCC eliminated a cap that prevented companies from reaching more than 39% of television viewers nationwide. The commission’s chair, Brendan Carr, presented the change as an opportunity to level the playing field between television and tech conglomerates, which don’t face similar restrictions.<\/p>\n
But the lone Democrat on the FCC blasted the move as illegal, and many critics argued that it swept aside a rule meant to safeguard a healthy diversity of perspectives in local news.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cIt’s unhealthy if one company dominates local broadcasting; it’s a media pluralism concern,\u201d\u00a0Guggenberger, the media law professor, said.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
TV layoffs loom in Houston, statewide, experts say<\/p>\n
The potential impact of the pending merger is still unclear.<\/p>\n
Nexstar hasn\u2019t announced any internal changes, including potential staff cuts or plans to physically combine the KHOU and CW39 newsrooms.<\/p>\n
But cost cuts are likely, said media professors and experts. Industry consolidation,\u00a0Guggenberger notes, tends to reduce both wages and overall employment, as workers have less leverage to negotiate higher salaries.<\/p>\n
![\"KHOU]()
<\/p>\n
KHOU 11 Reporter Troy Kless delivers a live reporting from East Meadow Drive as the pipeline fire continues burning in the background Monday, Sept. 16, 2024 in Deer Park.<\/p>\n
Yi-Chin Lee\/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“I think we will be seeing a dramatic shrinking of these newsrooms,” Metzger, the media researcher, said. “That trend is only going to accelerate under massive chain ownership.”<\/p>\n
Metzger said his research shows that media mergers typically lead to a more impoverished reporting landscape. There’s often less education coverage, less local business news and suburbs are neglected in favor of crime stories and a focus on bigger cities.<\/p>\n
If there’s a saving grace for Houston, McGuff argues, it’s that the local television market is both large and less ripe for consolidation than in other major Texas cities. Metzger also thinks it remains a “pretty vibrant news city.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most of the prominent stations are already owned by large national media brands (including Nexstar, Disney, Fox and Univision) who are not currently looking to sell, according to McGuff.<\/p>\n
But the impacts of the Nexstar merger and FCC changes are more likely to be felt in regions like Austin, Lubbock, or the Rio Grande Valley, where Nexstar is set to own both top stations, rather than the comparatively smaller CW39 and the larger KHOU.<\/p>\n
“When these newsrooms shrink down… there no longer is that feeling of ‘these are people who I can I trust, who are telling stories about me and are invested in telling stories about my community'”\u00a0Metzger said. “People don’t see enough stories about themselves.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Tegna Inc. headquarters on March 20, 2026 in Mclean, Virginia. Multiple states have joined a federal lawsuit to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-408047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Nexstar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786877415_100_full.png\")
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