Big Four Networks Push FCC To Further Erode Media Consolidation Limits

If you recall, the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai spent several years stripping away popular media consolidation limits established over decades with bipartisan approval. The push was ironically to directly help aid Sinclair broadcasting’s steady consolidation of local broadcast news, which resulted in a homogenized soup of well-funded propaganda and the erosion of real, local reporting.

Insatiable, the big four broadcasters have been lobbying the FCC as part of the agency’s belated 2022 Quadrennial Regulatory Review of the Commission’s Broadcast Ownership Rules. Fox, Viacom/CBS, Comcast/NBC, and ABC/Disney are pushing the agency to eliminate restrictions prohibiting the nation’s biggest four companies from merging:

The Dual Network Rule effectively prohibits a merger between any of the four broadcast
networks specifically named in the rule: ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. According to the FCC, it
is needed to “foster competition in the provision of primetime entertainment programming and
the sale of national advertising time.” However, dramatic changes in the market for
entertainment programming and national advertising in recent years have upended the status quo…

Ironically the same week they issued this filing, two of these companies, News Corporation and Comcast, were busy successfully derailing the FCC nomination of a popular media reformer using a homophobic smear campaign. The goal: to keep the agency gridlocked in perpetuity, preventing it from reversing any of the unpopular policies implemented during the Trump administration.

While it’s true that the big four major broadcasters see significantly more competition courtesy of the streaming evolution, that doesn’t mean that letting these media giants consolidate further won’t be harmful. Outside from the usual massive layoffs (which merging parties will pretend won’t happen… until they do), there’s zero real indication such consolidation benefits the public interest.

At the same time they’re arguing for further consolidation among the big four broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters is also calling on the FCC to further erode consolidation restrictions on radio, arguing, again, that increased competition from streaming means that consolidation restrictions are no longer necessary.

In his own public filing, Christopher Terry, Assistant Professor of Media Law at the University of Minnesota, notes that the FCC’s policy approach to media consolidation has been a hot mess for the better part of several decades, consistently resulting in the opposite of the FCC’s stated objectives:

We ask a simple question that we hope the agency will consider in its assessment, “How
will more consolidation benefit the public interest?” If the FCC’s local radio ownership limits are
to be raised, additional ownership consolidation at the local market level is almost certain to
follow. We are skeptical that additional consolidation, a policy likely to result in fewer
competitors will result in better competition, to say nothing of the effects that further blind
reliance on the benefits of economy of scale by agency will have on localism and diversity.

There’s really no shortage of evidence that mindless consolidation in both broadcast media and telecom has resulted in numerous, well-documented harms, especially in local media markets and particularly among marginalized communities. Similarly, there’s no evidence that industry claims that gutting media ownership limits has ever actually resulted in widespread competition and innovation.

Occasionally the FCC does the right thing. Such as its recent decision to send Standard General’s acquisition of Tegna to an administrative law judge out of concern the local broadcast TV merger would result in layoffs and even lower quality local news (contrary to industry claims, online competitors don’t inherently rush to fill local “news deserts” as media consolidates).

But generally the outlook on this subject doesn’t look great. The FCC spent four years under Trump as effectively a rubber stamp to industry. Now it’s been effectively gridlocked indefinitely by the successful attacks on Sohn, meaning it can’t vote to block mergers outright. The agency specifically built to regulate telecom and media… can’t actually do its job, quite by design.

That likely means further consolidation, less quality local reporting (at a time when we’re drowning in authoritarian propaganda), and more convoluted FCC proposals that, more often than not, don’t actually fix the actual problem. Meanwhile the myopic fixation exclusively on “Big Tech” policy means this stuff routinely flies under the radar, something media and telecom giants surely appreciate.