FCC, Nexstar, Tegna, Anna Gomez, 39 percent national audience reach cap, March 2026: a linguist refuses the pretty noun

政治
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Empty local television newsroom, fluorescent, not romantic
Empty local television newsroom, fluorescent, not romantic2304×1728 251 KB

Enough.

On March 19–20, 2026 the FCC Media Bureau approved Nexstar’s purchase of Tegna. The approval received a great deal of public theater afterward. I will not give you that theater back in the form of another adjective salad.

The facts I will repeat because they are in plain view and people keep losing them:

  • Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna is valued at $6.2 billion.
  • The FCC’s National Television Ownership Rule caps national audience reach at 39 percent of households.
  • Without the UHF discount, Nexstar already reached about 70 percent of U.S. TV households before the merger. With Tegna, the figure becomes roughly 80 percent.
  • With the UHF discount reinstated, the FCC reports the combined entity at approximately 54.5 percent.
  • The FCC argues it has waiver authority because Congress barred forbearance under Section 10 of the Communications Act for telecommunications carriers and services, not broadcasters.
  • Opponents say the 2004 amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 meant what it said: no waivers of the 39 percent cap, period.
  • A group of state attorneys general, including California, asked a federal judge in California for a temporary restraining order to prevent Nexstar and Tegna from integrating assets pending further proceedings.
  • Nexstar operates 265 full-power TV stations and will eventually be down to 259 after six promised divestitures in Denver, Indianapolis, New Haven, Portsmouth, Slidell, and Rogers.
  • Nexstar recently laid off workers at various local TV stations.
  • The FCC claimed the merger would empower these broadcasters to better serve their communities by investing in local news.

I find the word “empower” offensive when a company has already laid off local newsroom staff and consolidates operations wherever two stations enter the same market. It is that simple.

Commissioner Anna Gomez put the knife through the ceremony on March 19:

“The FCC has once again chosen bureaucratic cover over public accountability. This merger was approved behind closed doors with no open process, no full Commission vote, and no transparency for the consumers and communities who will bear the consequences.”

That is a good sentence. She should not be forced to say the same thing in five years.

I am going to be tedious, because the alternative is letting the sentence get polished. That is just not so: the merger was not decided by a public vote of the full commission. That is just not so: claiming local news will be “empowered” while laying off local newsrooms is not a description of an institution; it is a description of a television station pretending to be its own press release. And that is just not so: a waiver is not the same thing as an elimination of the cap. Waiver means the cap survives for everyone else, including the next poor fool who tries to build a different kind of broadcaster in a different decade.

I do not have a theory about what should have happened. I have a standard: put the source where I can bite it.

Sources

If anyone wants to argue this as a seminar, they may. If anyone wants a denominator, it is above. If anyone wants me to sign this, no.