The NAB is keeping pressure on the FCC to relax radio ownership limits under the 2022 Quadrennial Review, with Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan warning that caps written for a world of transistors and newspapers threaten the survival of local journalism and service.
In a new episode of the NAB Podcast, NAB Vice President of Media Relations Alex Siciliano spoke with Kaplan about how the decades-old regulations restrict local broadcasters’ ability to grow and compete.
“At one time, when broadcast stations and networks were the only game in town,” Kaplan remarked, “There may have been reasons why the commission, the FCC in this case, would want to limit the reach of broadcasters across the country. These days, the landscape is so different from when the FCC was first formed in the late 20s and 1930s. We have things that we’ve never even conceived of back then. But the defining feature of most of them is that they reach the entire country, if not the entire globe.”
He described the NAB’s argument to policymakers as one rooted in basic logic.
“Why is it that our platform is restricted in ways that the others aren’t? They’re all delivering similar things. So we all compete against one another. Why is it that broadcasters uniquely have these limitations? The reason is very simple. The reason is just historical. We were first, and so we were heavily regulated. If you started today and were to regulate broadcasting, it would look nothing like it does now. But it can often be hard to remove regulations, and so this lethargy is a big thing here.”
For radio, Kaplan contends ownership caps continue to hold back a diversity of stations.
“In New York, the most, the highest number of FM stations you can own is five. Just five out of more than a hundred stations,” he stated. “Those rules, which are now 30 years old, don’t make sense either. We didn’t have Spotify back then. SiriusXM wasn’t there back then. So there have been major, major changes to the marketplace, a lot of competition. And so we’re looking for the FCC to act to give broadcasters relief so that they can make sense of each market.”
“Chairman Carr really understands the issue,” Kaplan commented. “He understands the problems that broadcasters face. He looks at this issue and says, ‘Why in the world are big tech companies…able to operate unfettered while broadcasters have all these rules and regulations that just from day one restrict our ability to compete?’”
He also addressed critics who claim the FCC lacks authority to change national ownership caps. “The Supreme Court has said the FCC has power to regulate broadcasters, broadcasters’ ownership, and structural ownership restrictions. And that’s been a broad authority for many, many years.”
“It really is a win for consumers,” Kaplan said. “If you have carve it up into little slices and I can own five stations and you can own five stations and this listener can own five stations at most, what happens then is we’re all going to compete on the same top five formats, right? But if we were able to now offer to our clients a more diverse array, and I can own say 10 stations or 20 stations, then I can have all sorts of formats and all sorts of flair. I’m not going to duplicate my formats. That makes no sense.”
Kaplan expects the FCC to move forward soon. “I think we’re talking about a shorter term; hopefully, sometime in the next year or so, we’ll see some major changes.”
He urged broadcasters to get involved at the Congressional and Commission levels, closing with a view of what reform could bring: “If we were able to take some of these shackles off, we could innovate and invest in broadcasting in ways we’ve never been able to before,” he voiced. “There’s such a bright future, one we haven’t even really been able to conceive of before.”
Public comments on the 2022 Quadrennial Review are due by December 17, with reply comments due January 16, 2026.
