More radio broadcast groups of all sizes are pressing the FCC to dismantle local ownership caps, arguing that rules built for a pre-digital era now leave broadcast radio structurally disadvantaged against tech platforms that face no limits on scale or market concentration.
Multiple station groups, including Cromwell Media, L.M. Communications, and Galaxy Media Partners, filed separate but thematically aligned arguments addressing the Commision’s ongoing 2022 Quadrennial Review, each emphasizing the same fundamental mismatch: radio faces strict ownership limits while competing against tech giants that operate without geographic or numerical restrictions.
“The Local Radio Ownership Rule is an archaic and obsolete regulation created for a world that no longer exists,” Cromwell wrote, echoing language and arguments previously submitted by Connoisseur Media, Beasley Media Group, JVC Media, and the NAB. The filings point to streaming services, podcasts, and social media as direct substitutes for broadcast radio, with competition extending beyond the airwaves to the very interfaces listeners use, describing how systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have shifted control of the dashboard to technology companies.
The revenue picture these broadcasters paint is stark. L.M. Communications, which operates 12 stations across Kentucky, West Virginia, and South Carolina, reported that “more than 50% of L.M. Communications’ advertising buys from the auto, beer, and soft drink industries have migrated to digital competitors.” Galaxy Media Partners offered a specific example: a major cell phone provider that previously spent $100,000 annually on Galaxy’s Syracuse and Utica-Rome stations “has now shifted this entire budget to Galaxy’s digital competitors.”
The filings reject any notion that radio operates in a protected marketplace. Cromwell called that view a “regulatory fiction” and cited warnings from other broadcasters that treating over-the-air radio as unique and insulated “will only ensure the end of local broadcast radio as we know it.”
Rather than portraying deregulation as abandoning public interest obligations, the broadcasters argue it’s essential to preserving them. “Localism cannot survive on regulatory aspiration alone. It requires economic viability,” Cromwell wrote, contrasting radio’s community commitments with digital platforms’ absence of such duties: “Spotify doesn’t run food drives. Streaming services don’t collect toys for kids who need a little extra holiday magic.”
As all three bluntly state: “The greatest threat to localism is not consolidation of stations in a market. It is the collapse of local radio itself.”
Cox Media Group, which operates on a national level, reinforced this positioning, dismissing deregulation opponents as either nostalgic for a bygone era or acting out of competitive self-interest. “Parties who oppose media ownership reform, in contrast, do so either from a perspective that clings to the long-gone media ecosystem of the past or from a self-dealing, anticompetitive position,” CMG wrote.
CMG backed specific reforms proposed by the NAB: eliminating all restrictions on AM ownership, allowing up to eight commercial FM stations in Nielsen markets 1–75, and removing all FM ownership limits in markets 76 and below. The company argued that opponents “frequently recycle the same arguments made for decades,” linking consolidation to reduced local news without accounting for competitive pressures that have reshaped both audience behavior and advertising markets.
As evidence of what happens when scale is constrained, CMG pointed to its closure of a Washington, DC news bureau at the beginning of 2025, a team that had connected local communities to federal issues and leaders.
The MusicFIRST Coalition and Future of Music Coalition, predictably, have staked out opposing ground. In reply comments, the groups urged the FCC to maintain existing FM ownership caps, asserting that “the public interest in viewpoint diversity, competition and localism requires that the Commission retain current enumerated limits.”
They called the NAB’s deregulation push “false” and warned of “unintended consequences” in smaller and rural markets, arguing that loosening caps would entrench dominant operators and squeeze out independent voices, despite support for cap cuts from independent radio groups.
I agree with what I am reading here, that regulatory reform is needed.
I also note with no sense of satisfaction as a 52 plus year broadcaster that we today deal with just slightly fewer than 15,000 commercial competitors nationwide on-the-air and another five thousand non-commercial competitors.
When I started my broadcasting career in the 1970’s, there were around 5,000 AM and FM stations in total. And most broadcasting companies were monetary printing presses.
While I will acknowledge some companies are ridiculously in debt to the point virtually of no return, not all are and DO invest in their product. I question, myself whether America needs almost 20,000 radio stations with some trying to serve niche-of-a-niche-of-a-niche audiences to stay afloat.
Now the big thing at a few places is to replace the actual talent with an AI voice. How does one serve a community with that? I DO see AI in a smaller role. It could help small town stations (those that still exist) with promo production and imaging to a degree. But it still takes people to know HOW to make it do that.
Programming knowledge in extreme small town stations is scarce. I know of owners who do not spend their day selling anything, but instead spend their day trying to program the computer for another day. Small town formats make no sense. Jay-Z into Garth Brooks next to Metallica to cement a “we play anything” posture. Hello?
Thousands of songs in a single rotation doesn’t work and never has. You can have a big library, but need a structured playlist, too.
Smart companies and programmers know that.
You want radio to succeed again, invest in product, talent and programmers with programming knowledge.
You cannot “create” a “playlist” that pleases everyone. The hits are the hits. Radio has always been a “mass audience” game.
The biggest portion of radio’s audience is not 15 years old anymore. Maybe someday again. But not now.
There are markets where formats which can serve a demonstrably large audience are still not being served, because “someone” wants to carve out a tiny niche to survive.
What happened to the radio pros who read “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing”? And the pros that studied the rules of war?
Who thought 10 and 20 minute stop sets of 40-50 15 seconds spots was the answer? I know a station owner that once pulled a station out of bankruptcy like that. But once he got the station out of bankruptcy, the station went back to normal spot loads.
Where the heck is Bill Drake when we need him?
Might be a double edge sword!
With the call for regulatory reform of local ownership caps, is anyone concerned that the very same tech giants, mentioned as an excuse for this reform, might take advantage of it and invest directly in radio station ownership? A few decades ago, Google dabbled in the broadcast radio market, not by station ownership but by offering a discounted audio playout automation system that would give them direct access to local advertising dollars!
If OTA radio is faltering, even though it has a big presence in the online digital marketplace, don’t blame it on the competition without looking closely at its own marketing failures.
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