Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership(www.nbcnews.com)
74 pointsby pseudolus3 hours ago12 comments
  • magicalist2 hours ago
    Note that Tom Delay of all people (remember that guy? I'm old and I'd say barely) wrote an opposing op ed saying that even though he supports the change that this is contrary to the governing statute that he helped write, which explicitly bars the FCC from changing this limit

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/can-trump-fcc-re...

    • kurthr36 minutes ago
      Crime is legal (if you're in the right group).
      • hungryhobbit9 minutes ago
        There are plenty of things the Trump admin has done where that applies. This is (likely) not one of them.

        This idiocy hasn't had its day in court yet, but (especially given how the courts have turned against the administration in most cases recently) it seems highly likely this will be found to be illegal.

  • ilovetuxan hour ago
    Didn't the supreme court recently overturn the Chevron Doctrine?

    Doesn't that mean agencies like this are not free to set their own rules when a law is ambiguous?

    And isnt the cap on number of households reached actually codified unambiguously in federal law?

    Seems to me like this should not be allowed to happen.

    Let me know if I am wrong.

    • disposition2an hour ago
      If this Baltimore Sun article is accurate, it's worse than that as it sounds like the FCC is overriding a law passed by Congress and not just (re)setting a rule.

      > The 39% cap was established by Congress in 2004.

      1. https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/08/06/federal-communicatio...

      • warkdarrior13 minutes ago
        And what is this Congress going to do about it? Nothing.
    • YeahThisIsMean hour ago
      Well, you see, under the current administration, everything is allowed.
    • curt15an hour ago
      > Doesn't that mean agencies like this are not free to set their own rules when a law is ambiguous?

      Agencies can say whatever they want but courts are not required to defer to them when this inevitably goes to a lawsuit.

      • ilovetux9 minutes ago
        Thanks. That actually makes it make more sense, chevron doctrine applied to courts and what they can/can't do.

        Edit: made applies past tense

    • Finnucane12 minutes ago
      The law isn't ambiguous.
      • ilovetux8 minutes ago
        True, I tried to convey that.
  • trollbridge2 hours ago
    Broadcast TV seems laughably irrelevant. It’s difficult to find official numbers, but under 1% of US households have no cable, satellite TV, home Internet, or a cell phone. The latter two are how people consume video and TV to a large degree today.

    In exchange, we have a great deal of spectrum tied up for terrestrial TV, much of which goes to running infomercials or else is surreptitiously leased for terrestrial data broadcasts. And the government gets to decide to regulate it so it becomes inherently politicised - like favouring certain owners.

    Realistically - this spectrum should simply be reassigned for IP based services, with perhaps some set aside for non profit / educational uses, some for commercial, etc.

    (Radio is pretty much the same boat but I can see a case to be made for keeping some analog FM radio broadcasts. The 6MHz per channel for TV is insane.)

    • UncleOxidant2 hours ago
      > this spectrum should simply be reassigned for IP based services, with perhaps some set aside for non profit / educational uses, some for commercial, etc.

      We've got internet, but no cable. So we still watch over-the-air TV, though it's mostly PBS at this point (which is non profit). Also listen to FM radio - mostly NPR, a jazz station and a classical station - all also non-profit.

      • ericmay2 hours ago
        We have everything and still use antennas for local broadcast: NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Fox. Sports, especially football, are very easy to access over the air.
    • walrus012 hours ago
      > Broadcast TV seems laughably irrelevant. It’s difficult to find official numbers, but under 1% of US households have no cable,

      It's not that people are literally watching these on over the air digital TV antenna systems, but that if you have a "Broadcast TV" station in a certain market, it becomes carried by default on cable systems, direct to home satellite satellite dish systems, and regional FTTH providers' last-mile cable-tv-equivalent products.

      Look at for example how all the Seattle TV stations are carried on Comcast or Astound's networks.

      • Animats2 hours ago
        Amusingly, there are streaming sites you can't watch without permission from your "television provider".
    • BeetleBan hour ago
      > It’s difficult to find official numbers, but under 1% of US households have no cable, satellite TV, home Internet, or a cell phone. The latter two are how people consume video and TV to a large degree today.

      Fairly wrong/irrelevant metric. Lots of people subscribe to Netflix and watch OTA broadcasts.

      Lots of people stick to a Plex membership just because of its DVR capability - that's for broadcast TV.

      Lots of DVR and adjacent products out there on the market for people who watch broadcast TV.

      I wouldn't dream of getting a cable subscription when I can get so much good content for free. Streaming fills the rest.

    • francisofascii2 hours ago
      Irrelevant? I was under the impression cord cutting is pretty common. If you want to watch live sports or the news, you need CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX. We use a MoHu antenna in the attic.
      • sophacles4 minutes ago
        You can watch all of these things on the internet (legally).
    • wmf2 hours ago
      I heard in some European countries they packed digital SD channels into less spectrum (one 6 MHz channel can carry 4-5 TV channels). We should have done that here instead of broadcasting HD.
      • jyoung86072 hours ago
        That's already widely done in the US.

        If you plug in an antenna and scan for local channels, what used to be one analog TV channel on colloquially-named "channel 7" in the defined channel 7 frequency range will now be seen as "channel 7-1" which is often (but not always!) actually broadcast on the old frequency. During the ATSC transition, it was important to retain the branding and consumer memory of "channel 7" even when the RF transport frequency changed.

        The transition opened the ability to have an arbitrary number of digital subchannels, 7-2, 7-3, etc etc. The total bitrate available on a given ATSC broadcast is fixed, but it can be partitioned among multiple MPEG streams. The typical setup is one (occasional two) HD channels and several SD channels. Obviously there's a balancing act between bitrate and visual quality for each subchannel. It's often used as a way to broadcast older (read: cheaper) syndicated SD content on which they can run more ads while keeping the main HD channel quality reasonably acceptable.

        • wmf2 hours ago
          That's not what I'm talking about though. We should have repacked ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox onto a single channel.
          • TheAdamist12 minutes ago
            Atsc 3.0 does this in a lot of areas, it is in my area, all the channels are multiplexed from one broadcast, although it's hard to tell on the tv since you get the virtual channel numbers that are different and the same as the atsc 1.0 channels
          • jyoung8607an hour ago
            Seventeen years ago, when we transitioned, the state of available and deployed equipment, codecs, and home receivers would not have permitted it.

            I mean sure, you could pack four streams into one 6MHz channel. They could even be "HD" insofar as the transmitted stream is 720p or 1080i.

            The result would have been MPEG-2 program streams of about 4.5Mbit each instead of about 18-19Mbit (assuming no other subchannels). That would make live sports or anything with significant motion look like absolute dogshit.

            You might say that you don't care about that, and that is fine for you. However, in that case, I would respectfully submit that opinion to be far from the center of the bell curve of television-viewing American public of that era.

            We could do a lot better with ATSC 3.0. So, there might someday be a second round of broadcast frequency reclamation, just as there was with ATSC 1.0.

            • wmfan hour ago
              If you limit it to 480i I think 4.5 Mbps would be fine. If you use a cherrypicker sports could burst to a higher bitrate.
              • jyoung860720 minutes ago
                The original transition (and release of extra frequencies) was a delicate and painful process with lots of involved parties who had to spend lots of money to make it happen. Politically speaking, it could only happen if everyone involved saw some actual benefit from the change.

                If you got into a time machine and tried your plan two decades ago, the conversations would have gone something like this:

                -----

                Government: "Hey broadcaster, we need you to throw out and upgrade all your broadcast equipment that's working just fine today."

                Broadcaster: "Why?"

                Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."

                Broadcaster: "Why else?"

                Government: "That's really it."

                Broadcaster: "How about instead, I take a little bit of that money you're asking me to spend, and give it to your political opponent's campaign?"

                -----

                Government: "Hey citizens, we need you to buy a new TV or buy an adapter for your current TV that's currently working just fine."

                Citizen: "Why?"

                Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."

                Citizen: "Why else?"

                Government: "That's really it."

                Citizen: "How about instead, I vote for the opposition candidate who says he'll let me keep my TV and my money?"

                -----

                We're able to juggle broadcast frequencies more easily after the transition. Not only did we shrink the broadcast frequency range at the time of transition, we did it again about ten years ago with far less pain.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_wireless_sp...

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_sp...

                TL;DR: 480i would have been an absolute non-starter.

      • UncleOxidant2 hours ago
        Here in the US I get PBS on Channel 10 - there's 10.1 (straight PBS), 10.2 (PBS-World) and 10.3 (PBS kids) - do each of these take a separate 6MHz bandwidth, or are they packed into that single 6MHz bandwidth like in Europe?
        • wmf2 hours ago
          Yeah, that's one channel. IMO it's wasteful to give PBS an entire 6 MHz.
          • MrRadaran hour ago
            Why shouldn't they get 6 MHz? My PBS station broadcasts 4 subchannels: the main PBS channel, PBS Kids, a channel with programming about our local region (which airs live coverage of our state legislature when it's in session), and a loop of weather information with audio from the local NOAA Weather Radio broadcast. Those are all useful public services. PBS Kids in particular I think has a very good reason to exist, considering the absolute wasteland that is young children's media on streaming.
          • Animats2 hours ago
            ESPN, however, demands that they get the full 6 MHz.
      • 2 hours ago
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    • CamperBob22 hours ago
      Broadcast TV seems laughably irrelevant.

      The people who watch it vote in numbers far out of proportion to their peers. Nobody would bother to capture the industry if it weren't worthwhile.

    • dyauspitr2 hours ago
      > but under 1% of US households have no cable, satellite TV, home Internet, or a cell phone.

      Why are you bundling all those things together? The only thing we care about here is cable or satellite TV for your argument.

      • eigencoder2 hours ago
        Those are all the things that replace broadcast TV
        • mulmenan hour ago
          They replace it for delivery. That's not what this is about. The change discussed here is about content creation. That content is already delivered through multiple channels.
        • dyauspitran hour ago
          Well, cell phones and home Internet theoretically also replace cable and satellite TV but that’s not really what you see in real life.
          • eigencoderan hour ago
            My 70 year old grandpa just cancelled his satellite TV in favor of streaming :)
      • trollbridge2 hours ago
        Because someone with access to those things has no need for rabbit ears.

        Broadcast TV today is a stream of bytes. The same stream can be delivered via cable, satellite, a cell phone, or home Internet.

        • mulmenan hour ago
          This isn't about content delivery, it is about content creation. The rule change allows further centralization of editorial control of what your local reporters broadcast across all mediums.
    • erickhill2 hours ago
      Except for live sports, for which it is still vastly superior - no subscription required.
      • Marsymars43 minutes ago
        Funny how this has diverged in Canada/USA which otherwise have broadly similar broadcast markets in many respects. The broadcast stations have been gutted of sports content in favour of a couple of specialty channels which are a combined $70/month for streaming/app subscriptions.
    • mulmenan hour ago
      This analysis doesn't pass the sniff test. The presence of cable, satellite, or internet access says nothing about broadcast TV viewership. This is ownership of the content creation of local stations, not just the broadcast towers. Those stations have a presence on social media and streaming services.
  • londons_explore16 minutes ago
    > In a 2-1 vote, the FCC repealed a 22-year-old rule holding that a company cannot own stations that reach more than a combined 39% of the U.S. television audience.

    This seems like a very odd rule. What about things like CNN? Aren't they available to 100% of households?

    • SpicyLemonZest5 minutes ago
      Broadcast bandwidth is a limited resource, so it’s subject to special rules to ensure it’s fairly distributed in the public interest. It’s true that the rules aren’t nearly as important as they were when non-broadcast news was harder to find, although that doesn’t give the criminals in charge of the FCC a right to ignore the law.
    • Finnucane13 minutes ago
      The FCC mainly regulates broadcast. CNN is cable. Also, there's a difference between a station being in more than 39% of households and being 39% of the total market. Other stations still compete with CNN.
    • warkdarrior14 minutes ago
      This is about over-the-air/broadcast stations (e.g., ABC/NBC/CBS affiliates), not cable stations like CNN.
  • thenthenthenan hour ago
    In the early 2000’s analog public TV broadcasts were turned off in the Netherlands. The only way to receive the publicly funded channels was through a commercial company requiring a subscription to a digital service. I learned a lot that time.
  • SpicyLemonZest20 minutes ago
    Brendan Carr will need to go to prison too, I suppose. There’s nothing in the universe of an argument for why he should be allowed to overturn the will of Congress here, he’s just a petty criminal who doesn’t think he has to follow the rules. 2029 is gonna be a tough year.
  • gcanyonan hour ago
    What could possibly go wrong?
  • sleepybrett2 hours ago
    of course they do. Prepare for sinclair to own everything.
    • rdudekan hour ago
      Nexsar is taking over Tegna. Currently tied up in courts, but it's pretty much sinclair-like propaganda machine.
  • freediddy2 hours ago
    I haven't watched broadcast TV in over a decade, except for live sports. I also haven't listened to broadcast radio in even longer. My teenage children don't know how to use the TV or radio. It's like someone telling me a company has a monopoly on the telephone lines; nostalgic for me but utterly useless in 2026.
  • 0xbadcafebeean hour ago
    This will be remembered in history as a major test of whether we turn from a Republic to an Empire. If the executive can successfully override Congressional law, it's no longer a democracy.
  • lenerdenator2 hours ago
    Yet another thing to be undone when Trump leaves office.
    • altcognito2 hours ago
      In an ideal world we would roll back to the 1996 telecommunications laws. (or something approximating a sensible approach to less narrow share of the broadcast spectrum)

      I think anybody with a gripe about "mainstream media" should really examine who owns most of the media (billionaires) and see the value in enforcing that more indepedent voices are heard, not less as the past three decades has been a relentless march towards.

      The whole idea with the advent of the internet was that there would be so many more ways to be heard. That's been kinda true, but the public airwaves are dominated by corporate voices.

      • sophaclesa minute ago
        The term of "mainstream media" is just a dogwhistle for old people and indoctrinated conspiracy theorists at this point. I mean one of the biggest users of it is Fox News (the biggest news channel by a lot).

        At this point its just as meaningless of a term as "liberal" and "socialist". It describes nothing other than a disagreement with the far right position.

    • BigTTYGothGF2 hours ago
      I'd like to think a democratic president would have the appetite to do that.
    • mmmpetrichor2 hours ago
      From what I've read, its blatantly illegal. So probably will be undone by the courts in a few months. I wonder if anyone has a list of illegal things this white house has mandated that were overturned and rebuked by the courts soon after.
  • jimkleiber2 hours ago
    I wish more people would play the game Monopoly and realize how much it can suck to live in a world full of monopolies.