Atlanta TV stations could see changes under new FCC rule

It will replace the former limit with an individualized, case-by-case review the agency says is more aligned with current market realities.

“Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said during the meeting.

Under the change, the FCC can review and approve transactions involving television stations exceeding the 39% threshold, as long as regulators find they promote “the public interest,” a standard the agency has never narrowly defined.

The federal agency has said its interest in preserving localism, viewpoint diversity and competition can be “fully analyzed” in the context of a specific transaction.

Atlanta’s television news stations are owned by major companies with stations all across the country. These include Atlanta-based Gray Media (Atlanta News First), Cox Media Group (WSB-TV), Tegna (11Alive), Fox Television Stations (Fox 5 Atlanta) and CBS (CBS Atlanta). Cox Media Group is owned by parent company Apollo Global Management Inc. Cox Enterprises, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, holds a minority stake in CMG.

Now, a significant hurdle has been removed that would have made any mergers and acquisitions among these companies and their competitors difficult.

Supporters say the change will help local station groups compete against streaming, digital media and other platforms that have no ownership restrictions. Reaching greater scale could allow TV groups to invest further in local journalism, allowing broadcast journalism to avoid the same decline as the newspaper business, said Tom Sly, a media consultant who has worked across radio, television and advertising.

But critics say it could raise prices for consumers, weaken local news coverage or increase one group’s political influence, among other concerns.

Among the more vocal critics are cable and satellite companies, which pay something called retransmission fees to broadcasters to carry local stations. If there are fewer station groups with a larger reach across the country, they will have more negotiating power and could increase these fees. Providers might pass along the increases to their customers.

In a statement issued last month after the FCC announced its intent to vote, the American Television Alliance, a coalition of cable and satellite distribution platforms, said the FCC’s decision could drive up costs and reduce local news programming.

“There is no evidence that further broadcast consolidation improves the quality of local content,” ATVA spokesperson Hunter Wilson said in the statement. “We are confident that reviewing courts will quickly overturn this misguided action.”

Challenges lie ahead. It is likely the decision will spur legal action. Some federal lawmakers, as well as FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, argue only Congress has the authority to raise or eliminate the cap because the legislative branch set it into federal law.

And history points toward consolidation not having a great impact on localism. In 1996, the Telecommunications Act removed restrictions on national radio station ownership. In the decades following, the content across all previously locally programmed and hosted radio stations became increasingly homogenized.

“It’s going to be up to the broadcasters to hopefully not repeat what happened in radio, and to do what’s right in the long term,” Sly said.

This is the first time the ownership rule has been modified in more than two decades. The last update, which occurred in 2004, raised the cap from 35% to 39%.

But the media industry has changed significantly since then. The main competition for broadcasters was once cable networks. Now, they also face competition from streaming platforms such as YouTube and Netflix, social media giants and national networks. Declining traditional television viewership and revenue can make it harder to support news operations.

Broadcasters have been calling for regulators to relax ownership rules for years. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit tossed parts of another FCC rule limiting the number of television stations that one group can own in a local market.

The vote occurred during the same week many of the publicly traded broadcasting companies released their second quarter earnings results.

Perhaps most eager among them are Tegna, the parent company of Atlanta’s 11Alive, and Nexstar, which are undergoing a merger currently tied up in court. A bipartisan coalition of 13 attorneys general — Georgia not among them — is suing to block the merger, which was approved by federal regulators earlier this year. Nexstar had to secure a waiver because the combined companies would serve 54.5% of the national audience.

Gray Media will hold its earnings call Friday morning. But in its most recent quarterly call in May, Kevin Latek, Gray’s chief legal and development officer, said it currently reaches 25% of households, and “there’s nothing that we could imagine doing in the near or medium term that would require the cap to be raised.”

How could this impact local stations?

There are a number of ways the change could impact stations.

The station owners are looking to save money by gaining scale. This could involve reducing overhead expenses such as duplicative roles, or producing content once and cross-syndicating it across multiple stations.

That could mean fewer reporters, meteorologists and other staff members are required. There might be layoffs and fewer distinct voices on air. It could also mean there is less local or state-level news coverage and a larger emphasis on broader, national issues.

But there’s an argument that gaining scale could strengthen the quality of journalism. Larger, financially stronger organizations can devote more resources to their newsrooms.

“These bigger companies have more resources that can bring more technology and more innovation and improvements,” Sly, the media expert, said.

The extent of these changes could depend on the ownership group. A 2025 study by researchers from Stanford, the University of Utah and other institutions analyzed transcripts of local newscasts from 650 stations between 2013 and 2019 and measured changes at stations owned by the three largest broadcast conglomerates — Gray, Nexstar and Sinclair.

It found that Sinclair cut coverage of local events, Nexstar expanded its coverage, and Gray made minimal changes.

How could this impact me?

Consumers could see higher monthly TV bills if the companies negotiate higher retransmission fees. Over the last decade, these fees have increased significantly. ATVA, the cable and satellite group, reports they have increased 2,000%.

If news production becomes more centralized, the quality and quantity of coverage of issues relevant to viewers’ communities could also change.

“At the end of the day, you still got to make sure that you’re creating great content to engage the viewer, so that you can, quite frankly, have ratings and continue to generate revenue from that audience,” Sly said.