• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 9 hours ago

The huge decision to eliminate the 39% Federal Communications Commission rule is a move that critics say would allow big TV station owners to gain massive control over the U.S. TV station market.

Many need to figure out where the long-term damage is really landing -- broadcast TV jobs? Or with consumers?

The longtime 39% rule restricts TV station groups from owning TV stations, representing up to 39% of all U.S. TV households.

Proponents of the move say it would give the biggest TV station groups -- Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Grey Television and Scripps -- massive control to perhaps compete with local digital media and social media to find ways to gain more control of local advertising markets.

So is it better to go with no federal restrictions -- and let the marketplace decide?

A group of state and regional cable industry groups say no way -- and wonder what are consumers really getting.

With the cap disappearing the belief is that more journalism (and business) from TV stations core revenue-producing local news programming could thrive.

On the other side, regional/local cable TV and other bundlers of linear TV networks are concerned that bigger, more powerful TV station groups could dramatically increase retransmission and carriage fees for traditional TV network distributors and bundlers -- costs that will almost certainly be passed on to consumers in their monthly bills.

But these pay TV groups are also focused on the reason that TV stations claim this restriction needs to go away. They are having an increasingly hard time competing with unrestricted locally focused digital media companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, TikTok, and YouTube.

Why now? Since this year is a political season, local TV continues to benefit from the spike in political advertising.

At the same time, these gains are not what they used to be. Digital media and locally based streaming/CTV are making inroads and are improving in that area.

The FCC claims that they are saving jobs. In August, Commissioner of the FCC Brendan Carr said: “I don't want local broadcast TV to go the way of local newspapers, and yet the risk is real.”

So there is a rub: The expectation of saving jobs or keeping consumers costs low.

For the latter, many would say media consumers are finding new ways to gain access to local news content -- especially with the knowledge that 60% of all U.S. consumers regularly consume news from social media during an average month.

Young consumers, it seems, especially are in that camp -- or more so.

While big TV stations are still generally profitable with decent profit margins, those companies see the next generation of its viewers getting ever smaller. And ever faster.