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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced at a news policy event on Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to bolster local broadcast television stations. He emphasized the declining trust in national media and the need for local stations to play a more significant role in delivering news.
In a conversation with News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, Carr outlined his strategy to strengthen and empower local broadcast networks. He highlighted the importance of these stations in providing reliable news to their communities.
The FCC currently enforces regulations that restrict a single entity from owning television stations that reach over 39 percent of U.S. television households. Additionally, rules prevent a company from owning multiple stations in major networks such as ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, commonly referred to as the “top 4” rule.
Similar restrictions are in place for radio, limiting the number of AM and FM stations a single company can own simultaneously.
Carr argued that the current regulatory framework has tipped the “balance of power” in favor of national broadcasters, leaving local television networks disadvantaged. He believes that these imbalances need to be addressed to restore local stations’ influence.
“A study showed that while 15 percent of people would eat gas station sushi, only 9 percent trust legacy national media,” Carr remarked, underscoring the urgent need for change.
“Legacy media in particular, unlike local, is just wildly out of touch with where the American people are,” he added.
He noted that, because local broadcasters operate on the public airwaves, they have an obligation to provide their communities with thoughtful news coverage.
“Your local TV station, in too many cases, is simply just a mouthpiece for programming being created in Hollywood and New York. And so we’ve lost that balance of actual local news stations connected with the community,” he said at the – News policy event.
Carr credited President Donald Trump for “fundamentally reshaping the entire media ecosystem.”
“For so long, politicians just accepted the narrative that they were handed down, and they didn’t want to fight that… They just took the narrative. And President Trump fundamentally disrupted that. He set the terms of the debate,” Carr remarked.
“It really just smashed this facade that those gatekeepers get to control what we think and what we say… The legacy media is the emperor with no clothes,” he continued.
– News has reported how the FCC is open to changing the ownership cap to the extent that doing so constrains the power of national programmers like NBC and curtails the power of big tech by introducing new competition for the advertising dollars that sustain big tech’s growth.
