WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr says that the agency's 2022 Quadrennial Review of broadcast ownership regulation “will be inspired” by a recent 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the 2018 Quadrennial Review that vacated the agency's rules against a station group owning more than one of the top-four TV stations in audience share in a given market.
Carr applauded the ruling shortly after it was released on July 23, and made additional remarks on the ruling's impact during a press conference held after the July Open Meeting on July 24.
“A couple of things coming out of the decision I think are significant,” Carr said. “One, obviously we have to move forward with the Quadrennial here at the FCC, there was a PN [Public Notice] at least, that was issued for the 2022. There's some debate on whether that officially launched the 2022 or not. But we need to be moving forward with that, and we'll do so with this new decision in mind.”
“The decision does a couple things,” he said. “One, it makes clear the deregulatory intent that Congress had when it set the FCC down on this path of the Quadrennial reviews. Two, it eliminates one of the three rules left on the TV side.”
“So that potentially makes the FCC inquiry a little narrower, which would be a good thing,” Carr added. “I think we will be inspired by the approach that the court took in terms of looking at this statutory language that'll help inform us going forward, because we just had these rules and regulations on the books for far too long. I think it's held back investment in local news, local journalism, and particularly at this point in time, the big North Star for me as a media policy matter: ‘How do we re-empower those local TV stations, particularly relative to a lot of the national programming that's out there?’ ”
The FCC has issued a public notice asking for comments on the current ownership rules, with comments and replies to comments due in August.
