\n\tCarr is also promising to push the commission\u2019s agenda further into tensions around sports rights and the spread of major leagues and big-time teams to subscription-based streaming platforms a la Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. Broadcasters and some in Congress see this as a violation of the letter of the law as spelled out in the Sports Broadcasting Act. That\u2019s the 1961 legislation that provides an antitrust exemption to the team owners in the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball et al. to band together and negotiate media rights deals as a unit.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s industry speculation that Carr is paying close attention to broadcast TV issues because independent Big Four affiliate station owners can be allies in his high-profile regulatory jousts with Disney (owner of ABC)<\/a> and Comcast (owner of NBC), among other media heavyweights. <\/p>\n \n\tFront and center for broadcasters is the FCC\u2019s national station ownership cap. The commission is expected to vote on Aug. 6 to eliminate the restriction entirely, something broadcast station owners have sought for years. The cap\u2019s parameters have been adjusted numerous times over the past 85 years. In the mid-1990s the national limit was 12 stations total. Today, Nexstar owns more than 200 and Sinclair Broadcast Group is pushing 180. Since 2012, the cap has been set at a total reach of 39% of U.S. TV households \u2014 but with a big caveat that allows companies like Nexstar and Sinclair significant wiggle room. The station cap, as it stands today, is a pillar of the lawsuit that eight state attorneys general filed to block the Nexstar-Tegna merger on antitrust grounds \u2014 and won a court-ordered injunction freezing the companies\u2019 integration<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe station cap has stood for decades as an media ownership restriction rooted in First Amendment principles of fostering a diversity of voices and opinions on America\u2019s airwaves. For a century, media law and regulatory policy has followed the gospel that this is best accomplished in a free-market environment by having a broad range of owners, to ensure that one company can\u2019t dominate the airwaves on a national or near-national basis. The idea of localism, or the concept that local station ownership and management naturally aligns its interests with community mores and values, has been challenged over the past 30 years as TV and radio station ownership has steadily compressed into fewer hands. At present, the FCC estimates there are about 1,400 commercial TV stations operating across the U.S., plus another 400 public TV and educational stations.<\/p>\n \n\tCarr declined an interview request from Variety but he did address the cap issue on July 22 at an FCC press conference, saying it was an effort to give local stations \u201ca fighting chance\u201d in a changing market.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe national programmers \u2014 Comcast, Disney, Fox, Paramount \u2014 in a lot of ways I think a lot of them have amassed a tremendous amount of power over the last decade-plus. I think things are out of balance and one of the reasons we\u2019re doing this is to help bring balance back to the broadcast airwaves,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n \n\tHe asserted that the cap was originally designed to protect local station owners from the market power of the Big Three (and then Big Four) networks, by putting limits on their ability to amass O&O stations. But these days, broadcast TV distribution is less important to Big Four owners, and that shift has had the reverse effect of making the cap a burden for the independent owners that it was designed to serve.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe cap originally was it was designed to constrain the power of the national programmers. We didn\u2019t want them to combine significant scale in the programming side with significant scale in the TV side and so you limited it,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat\u2019s happened though is that the cap is no longer constraining the power of the national programmers but instead holding back locals. The reason for that part is because the national programmers don\u2019t rely in the same way anymore on ownership of TV stations to get their power. Instead, they go directly to consumers in ways that [are] unconstrained by any percentage limitation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have their own streaming services that can reach 100% of the population, their own apps that can reach 100% of the population. They negotiate directly with the national virtual cable companies like YouTube TV. So now the national programmers have clear paths to 100% of the regulant market, but the ones that are supposed to benefit from 39% constraint are the ones still stuck with it. Now is the right time to move forward so we can give local broadcast TV stations a fighting chance of scaling up and competing and it has the knock-on benefit I think to bring some additional balance back to the broadcast airwaves.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEnding the ownership cap has been a long-stated policy goal of the National Association of Broadcasters<\/a>, which represents most of the largest TV station owners in the U.S. The NAB and other industry organizations say rules that govern how many TV stations a company can own in the U.S. \u2014 as well as limits on the ownership of multiple stations in a single market \u2014 are wildly outmoded at a time when broadcasters compete for viewers and advertising dollars with global giants such as Netflix, Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple and TikTok.<\/p>\n
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