FCC Plans To Repeal 39% TV Ownership Cap (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0184472272
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/07/15/1953229/fcc-plans-to-repeal-39-tv-ownership-cap
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/2215682/fcc-plans-to-rip-up-local-tv-station-ownership-rules/
> On August 6, commissioners will hold a ballot to repeal Section 303 of the Communications Act, and with it the 39 percent rule. In essence, the rule limits the reach of a local TV network to no more than 39 percent of the U.S.' total audience market. In its place, the FCC would move to a system whereby it would personally approve or reject TV ownership deals on a case-by-case basis.
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> It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature. As Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the [2]Yale Journal on Regulation back in January, Section 10 of the Communications Act expressly forbids the FCC from bending the rules around Section 303.
"Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an [3]op-ed published on Breitbart . "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media. That figure is even lower among Republicans -- sitting at a mere three percent."
"... Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood," he alleged. "That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2215682/fcc-plans-to-rip-up-local-tv-station-ownership-rules/
[2] https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/waiving-the-communications-acts-national-broadcast-ownership-cap-is-a-legal-non-starter-by-lawrence-j-spiwak/
[3] https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/07/15/exclusive-fcc-chairman-brendan-carr-restoring-balance-to-the-broadcast-airwaves/
Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:1, Insightful)
Without a doubt, restricting the target audience a local broadcaster can reach to 39% is a form of censorship, no matter the reasoning behind it. In the past the FCC had to balance censorship with censorship, and the cap did that by preventing a broadcaster who refused to air a show from affecting more than 39% of the national audience. Now that programs from major studios can reach 100% of the national audience via online streaming services, this balance is now out of whack. If it is not addressed, local b
Re: (Score:2)
Free speech may be in theory a great thing, but when the ultra rich control such speech their "freedom" is not yours.
It's now in their best interest to lie and make sure that lie is repeated and told from multiple "sources" so it becomes the alternative truth.
For example "The USA has the hottest economy in the world" without saying how much borrowing is going on and how interest payments are now the US's biggest expense. The maxing out of the US "Credit card" will be a burden generations of Americans w
Re: (Score:3)
> Without a doubt, restricting the target audience a local broadcaster can reach to 39% is a form of censorship, no matter the reasoning behind it.
So if someone can't have a monopoly on local TV broadcasts they are being censored?
> In the past the FCC had to balance censorship with censorship, and the cap did that by preventing a broadcaster who refused to air a show from affecting more than 39% of the national audience.
No, the FCC had to balance public interest vs corporate and political interests because it's more beneficial to give the public more choice and different views.
> If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.
Where's the competition if all the local broadcasters are owned by the same company?
> Now that programs from major studios can reach 100% of the national audience via online streaming services
Oh, so every American has internet? Funny that, about ~25 million Americans lack access to reliable internet access.
> If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.
If addressed, there will not be any competition at all because most
How will this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media.
And how will allowing even more of the media to be owned by a single business help that? Honestly, this feels like clearing the way to make sure only the "correct" message is allowed out on mass media. And we all know that means more alternative facts and less actual reality.
Re: How will this help? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is a disingenuous statement. The GOP (and our current FCC) wants all the media to be owned by a very small handful of the âoerightâ people and they are pretty confident they can get there by removing this barrier
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That may work for people who only have TV as their sole source of news.
That isn't a lot of people these days unless you're very old.
A lot of us get our news on the Internet. They would have to pass a bill in Congress to allow the FCC or some other government agency do that.
Re: (Score:2)
This. The FCC controls licenses for broadcasters , radio and television. As in, over the electromagnetic spectrum, from stations to receivers. They don't control what is broadcast on cable or the internet.
Yet?
MOAR (Score:2)
Consolidate power and increase corporate profits! Let nothing stand in the way.
The modern Republican Party Sucks. (Score:1)
To the modern Republican "Conservative" means a dedication to concentrating wealth and power in those that already have it.
Established laws?Meaningless.
Established social norms? Meaningless.
Legal precedents? Meaningless.
Established and well researched science? Meaningless.
Sure they will pretend differently when it suits their goals. But their overriding goals are more power and wealth for themselves and to hell with the consequences.
To be clear I am not saying the Democratic Party doesn't have it
Broadcast TV is dying (Score:2)
Does a significant portion of the American populace even watch news from local TV stations any more?
When the universe which supports a specific business model starts to contract, then it is normal business practice to consolidate many vendors into one.
I was a long time ago (2008) when I canceled my cable TV subscription.
What I'd really fear is the FCC controlling news organizations and video on the Internet, but without an act of congress this seems unlikely. Of course, I wouldn't put it past them to try.
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> What I'd really fear is the FCC controlling news organizations and video on the Internet, but without an act of congress this seems unlikely. Of course, I wouldn't put it past them to try.
If they can get this done you can be sure they'll try to invent ways to prevent "unfriendly" news providers from being on the Internet. Most Internet providers are small and lack sufficient money, legal representation and political influence. It would actually be pretty easy for the government to convince their Internet service providers to deny their access and get their domains removed from DNS. If Russia and China can do it, so can the U.S.
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The US government has the capability to track every person by their cell phone and drop a nuclear bomb on them, and yet we're all here typing idiotic comments into a box here on slashdot.
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The 60+ year old MAGA crowd never switches their tv off Fox News. If you did change the channel the logo would be burned in.
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Most of those people haven't turned their TVs off or changed the channel since 9/11. That's how far back this cable news radicalization pipeline really goes.
Aim: 100% FoxNews 24h? (Score:2)
Since GOP voters do not trust many more than Breitbart and FoxNews, how can we imagine the future?
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us don't trust those media companies either. Well, at least I don't. I can't speak for anyone else.
Not sure this will make much of a difference (Score:2)
It's quite expensive to operate broadcast TV stations because they're designed to keep the barriers to access to their programming very low. No subscriptions or intermediate distribution networks between the licensed transmitter and the consumer...just some cheap and easy to find commodity hardware. At least, that was how TV used to be.
ATSC screwed that up in the US. The transition was huge bungle at a time when internet bandwidth was about on-par for the purpose of delivering video content. These days a ce
that's some twisted logic. (Score:2)
The reason we don't trust the media is that, to use one bad example, Sinclair media. They have run op-ed peices framed as news, across every one of their stations. You can find videos on youtube where they start with one presenter reading from a TelePrompTer and by the end of the video, all of the example 'news casts' are synchronised in a way that would make a choir ashamed. There are lots of rules that most large media companies break because the possible FCC penalties are less than their ill-gained
People want biased news. (Score:5, Interesting)
When news is presented that fits with one's political biases (or other biases), they tend to find it believable. And it if does not align with their biases, they tend to distrust it. This is even true of people who claim they want politically-neutral unbiased news....they still tend to react to it through the filter of their own biases.
It is natural enough to do this, and largely unconscious. It is VERY hard to overcome and even people who can overcome it don't do so ALL the time. It is the nature of bias to work this way.
On the flip side, there are ALSO powerful groups who have a clear interest in controlling narratives.
So, any news source that makes a sincere effort at being unbiased will be distrusted by viewers at least half the time, and will be fighting a losing battle against wealthy special interest groups. With cards stacked against them like that, it is no surprise that there aren't very many.
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> So, any news source that makes a sincere effort at being unbiased will be distrusted by viewers at least half the time
I disagree with that. In general the left is more likely to consider centrist or center right media trustworthy. How many on the left do you think like MSNow? It's fewer than you think.
I'm not saying it's impossible to produce an openly left wing news outlet that the left finds credible, look at the Alan Rusbridger Guardian , for example, as a paper that did its best to have integrity wh
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> I'm not interested in Trump's gaffes, There's more important things this administration is doing the media - all of it - needs to cover. And do so objectively - but not in a bipartisan way, which isn't the same thing at all.
Most people under 50 don't pay much attention to the news. People such as yourself are the minority. The majority are primarily entertainment consumers. Fact consumers such as you are a small sample of voters, like it or not. The challenge is motivating and messaging the indifferent majority without alienating the fact-driven and motivated minority...because democracy is a game of getting the most total votes.
No they don't (Score:2)
People don't want the news. News consumption continues to drop. People always thought of news as a bit of a chore. Something you were supposed to keep up with but not anything you enjoyed. It got turned into 24/7 entertainment crap when Fox News took over but that's not news that's propaganda. And even that isn't very popular.
People in America are in the habit of blaming individuals for either systemic problems or what our Epstein class is doing. It's a bad habit and I wish we would stop but well, there
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You're guilty of doing that quite a bit, and perpetuating the propaganda (on a proofless basis).
There is no Epstein class, there was just Epstein. There's the rich class, and the not-rich class.
The correct way to do news watching/reading is to read/watch at least three things about whatever topic you want or is presented and compare them, the identical stuff is closer to the actual truth. YMMV.
But, go ahead and believe what you want.
I'll just go on being a realist (and pessimist).