California Post Opinion Editor Joel Pollak Joins ‘Varney & Co.’ to discuss the launch of the new conservative outlet, California’s media imbalance and a controversial program in San Francisco that spent millions giving alcohol to homeless residents.
Americas local television stations do something that the coastal media class craves, but that ordinary families rely on every day: They cover school board battles, city hall scandals, high school championships, church fish fry warnings, snowstorms and tornado warnings, and the first minutes of a crisis when cell networks clog and rumors flood social media.
So why does Washington still treat these hometown institutions like it’s 1941?
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
At the time, the federal government imposed a national limit on the number of local TV stations a company could own. Decades later, that restriction changed to the current ‘national audience reach” capa rule that prohibits any broadcast group from owning stations that reach more than 39% of U.S. TV households.
However, these restrictions do not affect cable networks, satellite networks, national networks or streaming giants. This includes Google, Meta, and other Big Tech monopolies that collect local advertising dollars and decide what information people see with opaque algorithms. Local broadcasters are the only major video and news platform in America that has been told by the federal government: you are not allowed to scale up.
MIKE DAVIS: HOW THE TRUMP DOJ HOLDS GOOGLE ACCOUNTABLE
That’s not ‘pro-competition’. It’s pro-cartel.
The FCC’s own record shows how old this rule really is. The original national TV ownership limit dates back to the early days of television, a 1941-era policy choice made before the Internet, before cable, before satellite, before smartphones, before YouTube, before streaming. And although Congress pushed the cap higher in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has remained at 39% since 2004, even as the market for what you see on your screen transformed beyond recognition.
The national ownership ceiling does nothing to stop real concentration in the media. (iStock)
Here’s the part Washington often misses: Voters see the unfairness, too.
DAVID MARCUS: FCC DOES NOT GO AFTER ABC, IT PROTECTS PUBLIC AIRPORT
New polling has just been released by Fabrizio-Ward showing that a majority of Americans oppose this outdated ownership cap. By a 38-point margin, voters view the restriction on ownership of local TV stations as unfair. Even more striking, voters who get their local news from TV are, by an eight-to-one margin, less likely than not to vote for a member of Congress who opposes local TV station owners competing nationally for advertising against cable networks and Internet streamers.
That’s not a policy footnote. That’s a political warning label.
For years, defenders of the 39% cap have recycled the same talking points: “diversity,” “localism,” and the claim that larger channel groups will somehow erase local voices. But in 2026, the real threat to diversity of vision is not that one broadcaster could operate more stations. That’s a handful Major technology platforms manage digital distribution channels without ownership limits and minimal transparency.
If we want more local emergency coverage, more local investigative reporting, and the stories that matter to everyday Americans, we must stop starving the only system that still delivers free news to every American household.
The national ownership ceiling does nothing to stop real concentration in the media. It does nothing to limit the reach of a streaming platform. It does nothing to restrict a cable channel. It does not limit the distribution power of social media feeds. It only limits the people who still have FCC licenses, public obligations and the daily habit of showing up in local communities.
So what should conservatives do?
First, stop apologizing for having a fair market. If you believe in competition, competition must be real. A rule that uniquely restricts one industry while its competitors operate without similar restrictions is not regulation. It’s protectionism.
Second, take action. The FCC has an open procedure on this issue and it should get the job done and rescind the cap. It has both the authority and the responsibility to abolish this outdated bureaucratic rule, which puts a heavy thumb on the scale for Big Tech at the expense of local channels and local stories.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Conservatives have a choice: defend an arbitrary cap that empowers Big Tech, or scrap it and let local TV compete, invest and serve — not just in cities, but from sea to shining sea across the great expanse of our great, beautiful nation.
Voters are watching. And the numbers say they will remember who was by their side local communities and their stations when it counted.
