Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership | Hacker News Reader

Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

nbcnews.com

179 pointspseudolus112 comments

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...

Crime is legal (if you're in the right group).

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.

The courts haven't turned against the administration, they just don't care to rubber-stamp things that don't advance their personal policy goals and only erode trust in the courts. This advances their policy goals and that's scary.

Is anyone else wondering if this is just a “cover crime” for the ragebait while the real crime was s happening behind the scenes, not getting any attention because this news is capturing all of it? They’re doing something so ridiculously obvious that it’s illegal so they can’t possibly think this is where they gain something. The gain must be somewhere else.

yes

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.

Well, you see, under the current administration, everything is allowed.

> 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.

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

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...

And what is this Congress going to do about it? Nothing.

Congress already did something -- it wrote the law. It's the courts that rule against lawbreakers. However, it's the executive branch that takes action against lawbreakers, and that branch is currently utterly corrupt.

First, all three branches are obviously quite corrupt. Second, congress can obviously still avt to speak on behalf of us and they refuse to do so.

I explained the roles of the branches. This throwaway comment doesn't refute what I wrote. And the way Congress "speaks" on our behalf (that is, they are supposed to represent us) is through legislation.

No way am I giving the GOP-controlled Congress a pass on its numerous failures to oppose corrupt appointments or to impeach corrupt officials--including of course Carr--but that's not germane here ... an understanding of how the government works is, and clearly many people lack that.

Also, while the GOP is corrupt through and through, including the GOP-dominated SCOTUS, saying that the "branches" are is inaccurate -- the lower courts are still a bulwark against corruption. This simplistic throwaway handwaving in no way invalidates my entirely accurate comment about the roles of the branches. I won't waste more time commenting on this.

The key is who has standing in such a case. Likely broadcasters are the ones most likely to be impacted. Also depending on how the statute is written markets with total monopoly could have standing, individuals to cities.

It’s not just the executive branch who is able to sue in court. Everyone and every company can. But you have to demonstrate you suffered harm and are a legitimate plaintiff.

For changes like this I suspect there’s a lot of people and companies with standing.

That article seems pretty ironic considering the Baltimore Sun is controlled by the head of Sinclair, a group pursuing (partisan) media consolidation.

...are you criticizing them for having editorial independence?

How does this story demonstrate independence? It's covering an announcement.

And being good-looking? Are you criticizing them for being fit and handsome?

This article is syndicated from The Epoch Times, a hard-right Falun Gong mouthpiece pretty well known for spreading conspiracy theories and extremely partisan reporting.

The law isn't ambiguous.

True, I tried to convey that.

What law? The US code? Does that matter anymore?

Congress has made their ruling, now let them enforce it.

The difference in this case is that the victims are the general public, who don't even own a single lobbyist and can be safely ignored.

Don’t worry, the deeply principled conservative justices will never allow some random bureaucrats to legislate.

These laws, which exist in a similar way in Europe, intend to prevent media control by closed groups to take over democracy.

To be honest, scraping them on broadcast TV will probably have little influence, even though in the wrong direction, because TV is no longer the media with the most influence.

The real failure is that no one cared to regulate ownership of digital medias, i.e. social networks, Youtube, etc. These have shown documented examples of influencing elections directly.

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.)

> 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.

Those are all the things that replace broadcast TV

Well, cell phones and home Internet theoretically also replace cable and satellite TV but that’s not really what you see in real life.

My 70 year old grandpa just cancelled his satellite TV in favor of streaming :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Yeah, that's one channel. IMO it's wasteful to give PBS an entire 6 MHz.

ESPN, however, demands that they get the full 6 MHz.

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.

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.

That's not what I'm talking about though. We should have repacked ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox onto a single channel.

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.

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.

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.

480i? Nobody owns CRTs anymore, so interlaced content is inferior in many ways. 720p is already garbage for 2026. We shouldn’t be reducing resolution, if anything it should be going up.

A single 6MHz channel at the top end of UHF band would be enough to implement a universal cellular telephony service - simple calls and texts - at very low cost if phones had modems for it. I think that would be the better use of spectrum.

RF Channels 38-83 have all been taken from (US) TV since the 80s. Mostly used for mobile phones.

rf 70+ is 800 Mhz

rf 52+ is 700 Mhz

rf 38+ is 600 Mhz

Lots of phones support these frequencies.

Kind of annoying for tv, because cell towers on frequencies that used to be tv frequencies can overload amplifiers, so peeps need to go put filters up before the preamp.

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

The very VERY unfortunate thing about ATSC 3.0 is it has an internet optional requirement which broadcasters have decided to use as a gate for watching ATSC content. They've turned it into a premium service rather than just simply using the open codecs.

If you're gonna smash everything onto a single channel, you may as well turn the whole thing off.

Gonna look like absolute trash. Might be almost acceptable with atsc 3, except for the diaster of DRM and new proprietary audio codecs that brings.

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.

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.

You can watch all of these things on the internet (legally).

For free? (Legally.)

Even then you're watching them from those broadcast stations. The live channel feeds in those apps is from your local station, and if you're watching any local news it's also clips from your station's newscast. You'll be impacted by fewer perspectives as stations consolidate.

Is easy to think about content from a consumer mindset that everything just exists for you, but no the stuff on the internet is made by real people who are impacted by the works around them.

I get all of those via streaming, local affiliates even, on Fubo. Hulu was similar IIRC. Have not had cable TV in years, even longer since I used an antenna.

You're paying for Fubo, though, are you not? It's not a free service like OTA TV is.

Correct.

> 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.

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.

It’s nuts to pay for commercials. More people have antennas (or griddles or whatever they are now) than get credit.

The advantage of watching live sports over the air rather than streaming is that there is no delay and the broadcast is as high quality as it can get rather than getting compressed by your streaming app.

PBS and the rest of the broadcast industry could just offer streams of their channels over the Internet. It’s a choice they make not to.

(Disclaimer: used to work at PBS on the team with the guy who was tirelessly trying to get them to do this back in 2001.)

> 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.

Amusingly, there are streaming sites you can't watch without permission from your "television provider".

Except for live sports, for which it is still vastly superior - no subscription required.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

They did this in the US already, three times.

In 1983, channels 70 to 83 were taken for mobile phones. In 2008, rf channels 52-69 were reassigned, and 2016, rf 38-51 were reassigned. rf 37 is reserved for radio astronomy.

Wow, the people buying them up must be really stupid then. You should tell them.

That's just step 1. In step 2, the argument goes: "See this is already allowed for broadcast tv. Streaming is no different, so we demand the same change there"... and so on.

Why the fuck would I spend thousands of dollars on cable or satellite or streaming when I can buy a $20 antenna once, plug it into the back of any modern TV, and get free channels (including major sporting events) forever?

People don’t use broadcast because they don’t know how to set it up, or because they don’t have a TV, or because they can justify buying cable for whatever reason.

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.

He will be pardoned by trump before the latter leaves the office. There will be LOTS of people pardoned by trump.

I immigrated from a very poor, military-ruled country to the US more than 20 years ago. It is very sad to see the democratic system and the rule of law eroding in the US. All the mistakes that I observed and lived through in my former country are being practiced in the US these days.

Rand Paul has solved that problem for us today; if Fauci can be prosecuted despite his pardon, so can the Trumpists. (Probably a win-win for him, I suppose, and I was never a fan of the pardon power in the first place.)

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.

I do think this is an interesting topic. You can take the perspective that the government shouldn't have a monopoly on approving who can communicate over the airwaves so long as they aren't committing a crime and also shouldn't be able to outcompete companies trying to make a profit.

At the same time, in a country with many competing localities, radio stations, public broadcast TV, university channels, etc like the US it is quite nice so long as it's balanced. I think in the US it is a legal requirement that any licensed broadcasts legally meet some bar as being "in service to the public". Many companies have a similar philosophy and see themselves as doing a good thing by serving the public, while running a sustainable business at the same time. Not all companies, though.

That's not to say we haven't seen garbage broadcast over the airwaves that I wouldn't consider to be in service to the public, but on average it's alright.

What was Netherlands' reasoning for doing this?

Not sure what the reasoning is. I guess cost (disguised as ‘innovation) ? For me it is extremely weird that you now need to pay to receive national news, warnings etc that i payed for already through taxes.

This does not seem to undo caps on ownership within broadcast markets, though? That seems like a more sensible cap to me. Of course, if Congress made the cap and didn't give authority to the FCC to adjust it, they shouldn't be trying. But I'm not familiar with the statutes involved.

A necessary tool to manufacture consent in the feudalist society we're speed running towards

What could possibly go wrong?

> 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?

This is about over-the-air/broadcast stations (e.g., ABC/NBC/CBS affiliates), not cable stations like CNN.

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.

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.

48927851 | FCC to repeal 39% TV ownership cap in boost for Trump-friendly news orgs | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/fcc-to-repeal-39... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48927851

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.

Obligatory, if you haven't seen it yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

of course they do. Prepare for sinclair to own everything.

Nexsar is taking over Tegna. Currently tied up in courts, but it's pretty much sinclair-like propaganda machine.

Don't forget Grey Media grabbing the rural circuit.

We've been absorbed by Grey and lost so much local news programming while it gets replaced with "must run" soft story segments from a national "investigateTV" that runs bullshit soft stories for gullible yokels to feel that they're getting news.

Meanwhile my local station (over 60 miles away) can't even run stories in the county they're supposed to cover; when presented stories and footage of rabies vaccine airdrops they'd rather run a story about some old lady watching their syndicated Mr. Food cooking segment they don't even produce for 40 years.

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.

most people aren't hn readers. broadcast tv is far from useless in 2026, that's how many normies watch tv.

this is all about allowing sinclair and their right wing ilk to own local news.

> this is all about allowing sinclair and their right wing ilk to own local news.

From 2017, "Sinclair Broadcast Group: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

"John Oliver: Sinclair Broadcasting brings 'troubling' rightwing bias to local news":

* https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/03/john-ol...

"John Oliver: How Sinclair Broadcast Group 'Brainwashes' Local News":

* https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/john-ol...

TV viewership for 18-49 has dropped almost 80% since 2000, with the bulk of that drop between 2015 and today. So most "normies" are not watching tv. Older people might, but they represent a fraction of the spending audience.

They just need to vote one last time. You, to save America from democracy.

And you believe everyone is just like you? What are the consequences of consolidating ownership of broadcast stations? Remember the Kimmel incident? How does that go with even more consolidation?

Yes most are just like me, because TV viewership has dropped almost 80% since 2000 for 18-49.

How are you still not getting this? The change is not about owning radio towers. It allows ownership of the programming, including local news production. This is a move for centralization of editorial control.

You might not care but Sinclair very much does.

I love being able to watch sports for free with my antenna. I hope that doesn't end for a long time.

I wish more people would play the game Monopoly and realize how much it can suck to live in a world full of monopolies.

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