For decades, one company could own TV stations counted as reaching about 39% of U.S. households, and no more.
The rule had been on the books in some form since 1941, and the cap was last raised to 39% in 2004.
Chairman Brendan Carr said the old approach no longer fits the market. "We should stop hamstringing this one segment of the broader market with outdated restrictions," he said.
Carr pointed to the sharp decline of local newspapers, arguing that broadcasters need room to grow if local journalism is going to survive. The vote marks the biggest change to local TV ownership rules in decades, and it shifts how deals get judged: instead of hitting a fixed percentage, a deal now lives or dies by what regulators think of it.
The vote was not unanimous, and the dissent was sharp. Anna Gomez dissented.
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Gomez's objection is not just a policy fight. It raises a legal question about whether the FCC can make this change on its own, since she believes the agency is acting beyond its powers.
Critics add that the change could hand station owners too much control. With fewer limits on reach, a company could dominate local news across many markets, giving it excessive market power.
The current rules already had a quirk that let some owners push past the limit, since stations with weaker over-the-air signals were counted only partially toward a company's ownership total. That offered a little room to grow, and the new approach removes it entirely.
The cap was already bending before it broke.
The commission had to waive the 39% rule to make the Nexstar/Tegna deal happen, and the approval drew opposition from Democratic-led states. If courts do not reverse the acquisition, Nexstar would reach 80% of U.S. TV households.
For investors, the big story is consolidation. When the cap was in place, a broadcaster could only grow so far before running out of room.
Now that the ceiling is gone, bigger operators can buy up smaller ones, and the Nexstar deal shows buyers are already moving. The winners could be the station owners themselves, since more scale usually means more bargaining power with advertisers and cable and streaming distributors.
But critics warn that same scale gives owners more control over what viewers see, and that trade-off is worth watching. For the rest of us, the change lands in what we watch.
The station that carries your evening news may end up owned by a national giant rather than a local company. Whether that produces better journalism or thinner reporting is the experiment the FCC just agreed to run.
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