Outdated FCC rules put local TV stations at disadvantage

When FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appears before the Senate Commerce Committee on Dec. 17, Democrats will likely focus their energy on projecting. They will argue that after years of collaborating with Big Tech to censor conservatives, Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension for his vile comments about Charlie Kirk was somehow a threat to free speech.

But the bipartisan issue the committee should focus on is the economic crisis facing America’s local news. Regulations regarding local television are older than the internet as we know it. Not only are they outdated, they provide a structural advantage for liberal media and tech giants while posing a serious handicap to the conservative-leaning local voices trusted by millions.

These property rules were designed for the 1990s world. There was no Google. Smartphones were a decade away. Netflix was unimaginable. But local TV and radio stations, the nation’s most trusted and reliable news sources, are regulated as if it were the age of dial-up. Meanwhile, the largest tech companies in the world, all with obvious liberal leanings, operate without the artificial government-imposed limits imposed on local broadcasters on how many American households they can reach.

Google-owned YouTube can saturate the country with algorithm-driven narratives and AI trends without a single federal restriction. MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), CNN, and other left-wing cable conglomerates can reach nearly every home (if the public can stomach them) with no cap limiting their influence.

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Only local publishers that truly reflect the values ​​of their communities, including conservative communities, adhere to the 30-year limits. In real terms, this means broadcasters have less ability to compete, have less financial capacity to create their own content that appeals to local and regional tastes, and have less power to make programming decisions like staying off the air like Jimmy Kimmel. Washington has built the most unbalanced media market in modern history, and real Americans in real America are paying the price.

That’s why Republican leaders on the Senate Commerce Committee are sounding the alarm. They told Carr recently that today’s broadcast rules emerged “in the 1940s” and remain “almost the same as they were in the 1990s.” Nearly 80 House members also warned that the rules now put broadcasters at a “serious disadvantage” against unregulated global rivals.

You can see this disadvantage in every corner of the country. Local newspapers are closing at a devastating rate. There are no reporters in all districts anymore. When local journalism disappears, unregulated tech platforms and national outlets fill the gap with left-wing content that rarely reflects conservative, rural or middle American priorities. Washington’s outdated rules do not protect diversity of opinion. They entrench a system in which credible local voices are excluded and left-bank platforms become more dominant.

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Here’s the truth most people in Washington don’t want to say out loud: Refusing to modernize broadcast ownership rules has done more to undermine local journalism than any technological change in the last 25 years. Stations are not scalable. Newsrooms cannot expand. Communities lose coverage. And into this void flows fake news; many of these are powered by foreign actors and ideologically aligned tech platforms that face no meaningful limits on reach or influence.

Carr recognizes this is a “glass breaking moment” for local broadcasters. If Washington continues to regulate local channels as if it were 1996, local television broadcasters will follow newspapers into extinction. This is not a very remote possibility; It is an inevitable consequence of rules that prevent reliable local broadcasters from competing on equal terms.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

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Carr needs to act quickly to remove the outdated cap on national TV reach and modernize local broadcast ownership rules. A clear commitment now would show that America’s information infrastructure deserves the same forward-looking approach that Washington has taken for broadband, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

The principle is simple: If global technology platforms can reach the entire country without limitations, then the local broadcasters Americans rely on shouldn’t be handcuffed by rules written by most people without an email address and, if they have a cell phone, a bag in their car or an antenna.

Local broadcasters remain the only free, local and universally accessible communications network. They are the backbone of community-level information and the last line of defense against left-wing pink slime journalism and well-established foreign influence campaigns funded by billionaires like George Soros and Reid Hoffman.

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But they cannot continue to fulfill this mission if Washington insists on tying them to the past.

The rules governing local television are older than the Internet. This is not only crazy but also dangerous. Now it’s time to change course.