FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said on a Breitbart News policy program Tuesday that the agency is working to “revitalize and empower” local broadcast television stations, given how little trust there is in national media.
Carr discussed his plan to “revitalize and invigorate” local broadcast television stations in an interview with Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle.
Current FCC rules limit the ability of any single entity to own television stations that reach more than 39 percent of American television households. Another regulation limits the number of stations a company can own. Otherwise known as the “Top 4” rule, this applies to the ownership of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC affiliate stations.
Similarly, there are strict regulations that limit the number of AM and FM radio stations a company can own at one time.
The FCC Chairman said that over the years, the “balance of power” has tilted too much toward national programmers and that local television networks have suffered as a result.
The FCC chairman said, “There was actually a study that found 15 percent of people will eat gas station sushi, but only 9 percent trust legacy national media.”
“The opposite of local media, especially legacy media, is wildly out of touch with where the American people are,” he said.
He said that, because local broadcasters operate over the public airwaves, they have an obligation to provide thoughtful news coverage to their communities.
“Your local TV station, in many cases, is just a mouthpiece for programming being made in Hollywood and New York. And so we’ve lost the balance of real local news stations that are connected to the community,” he said at a Breitbart News policy event.
Carr credited President Donald Trump for “fundamentally reshaping the entire media ecosystem.”
Carr commented, “For so long, politicians just accepted the narrative that they were handed, and they didn’t want to fight it… They just took the narrative. And President Trump basically disrupted it. He set the terms of the debate.”
He added, “It’s really broken down the facade that those gatekeepers have to control what we think and what we say… legacy media is the emperor without clothes.”
Breitbart News has reported how the FCC is prepared to change ownership limits to such an extent that doing so would hamper the power of national programmers like NBC and reduce the power of big tech by introducing new competition for the advertising dollars that sustain big tech’s growth.
