Television broadcasters just got their regulatory win; is radio next? The NAB says the FCC’s recent move to loosen national TV ownership limits has created new momentum for the continued fight over how many radio stations a single company can own in a market.
The FCC voted 2-1 last month to replace its 39% national television ownership cap with a case-by-case public interest review, with Commissioner Anna Gomez dissenting. Radio Ink reported at the time that NAB was already using the vote to press the Commission on a parallel issue: the 2022 Quadrennial Review, which governs local ownership limits for both television and radio stations.
NAB Director of Communications and Social Media Grace Whaley told Radio Ink, “The FCC’s action on the national television cap is meaningful progress. For radio, the focus is the 2022 quadrennial review, where we continue to urge the Commission to modernize local ownership rules that have been frozen in place for 30 years. We are encouraged by the FCC’s momentum and will continue pressing for action.”
Those local rules have not changed since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. NAB has asked the FCC to eliminate ownership limits entirely in markets ranked 76 and below, and to allow broadcasters to own up to eight FM stations with no cap on AM stations in the top 75 markets, arguing the current limits were built for a media landscape that predates streaming, social media and digital advertising.
Connoisseur Media CEO Jeff Warshaw, one of radio’s most active dealmakers over the past year, told Radio Ink, “I’m optimistic that the FCC recognizes that radio isn’t its own universe and they will allow for the consolidation that the industry needs for survival.”
Warshaw met directly with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on June 8, warning in an ex parte filing that radio risks the same decline that gutted local newspapers without significant regulatory reform. Warshaw has argued radio no longer competes in an isolated market, citing a decade-long decline in radio’s share of listening and local advertising revenue.
Beasley Media Group CEO Caroline Beasley met separately with Trusty and her senior legal advisor, Marcus Maher, while Cumulus Media CEO Mary Berner pressed Carr directly on June 10. Connoisseur, Townsquare Media, Bonneville and Midwest Communications jointly filed reply comments in January urging the FCC to eliminate the Local Radio Ownership Rule outright.
The Commission’s language from the vote sounds encouraging to many on the side of deregulation.
Chairman Carr said, “Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers…I don’t want local broadcast TV to go the way of local newspapers. And yet the risk is real.”
However, there is still dissent. In voting against the measure, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez called the cap “a structural safeguard to preserve localism, viewpoint diversity, and competition” and the Commission’s action “unlawful on its face.” She argued only Congress has the authority to change a cap it wrote into federal law.
NABOB, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and the Multicultural Media and Correspondents Association said in a joint statement that the vote “is a completely lawless exercise that will undermine competition and jobs, deter innovation, drive up prices, and replace relevant local news with canned national storylines.” The groups argued the cap “helps to preserve one of the last areas of competition and media diversity, ensuring that trusted, local voices don’t get merged out of existence.”
The FCC’s next opportunity for a formal vote on the 2022 Quadrennial Review will be at the September open meeting, scheduled for September 30.
With reporting from Adam Jacobson
