NAB Urges FCC To Modernize Local Ownership Rules

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the agency’s 2022 Quadrennial Review, calling for the elimination or relaxation of long-standing local broadcast ownership limits, with particular emphasis on radio deregulation.

In its filing, NAB argues that existing local radio ownership caps no longer reflect today’s media landscape, where broadcasters compete directly with unregulated audio platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and SiriusXM. According to NAB, these digital services face no ownership restrictions and can reach national audiences, while local broadcasters remain constrained by rules adopted decades ago.

NAB maintains that the FCC should move away from blanket, pre-transaction ownership limits and instead rely on its existing authority to review individual broadcast transactions on a case-by-case basis. The organization stresses that removing ex ante rules would not eliminate FCC oversight, but would allow the Commission to better evaluate whether proposed transactions serve the public interest based on local market conditions.

The filing also contends that forcing broadcasters to operate under what it calls uneconomic ownership structures ultimately harms listeners by limiting investment, innovation, and the ability to expand or diversify local programming. NAB cites a recent BIA report indicating that loosening or eliminating local radio ownership caps could increase programming diversity, similar to the effects seen after Congress eased ownership rules in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

In addition to radio, NAB reiterates its position that the FCC should take a comparable approach to its remaining local television ownership restriction, which generally limits station groups to two full-power TV stations per market. NAB argues that the same competitive pressures facing radio broadcasters apply to television, and that ownership rules should be modernized accordingly.