Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we explore how a new initiative from the Federal Communications Commission will only further consolidate the broadcast media industry.
The FCC Gives Legacy Media Giants a Free Hand to Get Bigger
Austin Ahlman
The Federal Communications Commission's “Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative, launched in March under current Chair Brendan Carr, is being cast by the administration as a sensible move to update regulations by removing rules for outdated technologies like telegraphs and "rabbit-ear" antennae. But a closer look at the proceedings, alongside the administration's broader political moves, suggests a more calculated agenda is at play.
In practice, the "Delete, Delete, Delete" docket has actually become a platform for a coordinated corporate campaign to dismantle decades of public interest safeguards on broadcast media. Filings from industry players reveal striking agreement, not just on cutting obsolete rules, but on a sweeping and radical overhaul of fundamental policies governing media ownership and competition. And the ongoing, open-ended nature of Carr’s rulemaking proceeding means media corporations have essentially three more years to lobby for the slashing of what remains of public interest media regulation.
This project is unfolding in a political climate where the boundaries between regulatory oversight and political extortion have become increasingly blurred. Recent events like the suspension and subsequent reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel Live by the legacy television broadcast network ABC (owned by Disney) demonstrates the administration's willingness to use the FCC's power to extract more favorable media coverage from the corporations that dominate news and entertainment.
The public justification for the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding is to allow broadcasters to achieve greater scale to compete with Big Tech. The advent of streaming and digital platforms has no doubt put significant pressure on legacy media. But the reasonable regulatory response is not to overthrow a system that has worked well for nearly a century, but to adapt the regulatory principles that successfully governed broadcast to ensure they continue to work in the digital era.
The overall result of the FCC’s present suite of policies is a sophisticated combination of stick and carrot designed to force and entice legacy media to promote Trump Administration interests. Chair Carr’s repeated public threats of regulatory consequences for broadcasters airing content critical of the Trump administration has a chilling effect, with even the most powerful of media corporations increasingly fearful of a blocked merger, a license revocation, or a burdensome investigation. The "Delete, Delete, Delete" docket, by contrast, offers these same corporate media powers a rather enticing prospect of further radical deregulation of their business models and practices.
The most notable requests from corporate-aligned contributors to the initial comment phase of the ongoing Delete Delete Delete rulemaking process include:
- The Elimination of the National Television Ownership Cap: This rule currently prevents a single corporation from owning stations that reach more than 39% of U.S. households. That cap has gradually been raised since the FCC first
started limiting the number of television stations one corporation could own in 1941. (The commission switched from numerical caps to percentage-based market penetration limits in 1985.) Now, trade groups like the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and think tanks such as the American Action Forum (AAF) are advocating for its complete removal, arguing it's an "analog-era rule" that hinders their ability to compete with the streaming giants. Crucially, it is the expected removal of this cap that would allow for the proposed merger between Nexstar and Tegna, which was a core point of government leverage in the Kimmel saga.
- Total Repeal of Local Ownership Rules: Broadcasters are also demanding a total end to longstanding rules that limit a corporation from owning more than two television stations in a single market or controlling an excessive number of local radio stations. These regulations, which are meant to limit media owners from having too much influence in local communities, date to 1964 but have been gradually weakened over the last 60 years. In a dramatic escalation, the NAB recently called for the removal of all local radio ownership limits.
- Ending the Dual Network Rule: This longstanding regulation prohibits a merger between any of the four major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC). Their representatives contend it no longer serves the public interest in today's crowded media landscape.
The timing of this initiative coincides with broader attacks by corporate interests on the traditional authorities of U.S. regulatory agencies. In fact, the docket explicitly invites comments about the implications of the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. That decision overturned the Chevron doctrine that had long required courts to defer to agency expertise. Carr is now exploiting that ruling to offer corporations the opportunity to take a hatchet to any parts of the FCC’s body of regulation they wish—assuming they are on favorable terms with the administration.
Carr is moving quickly. Earlier this month, the FCC voted to include several suggested rule changes in the Delete, Delete, Delete docket in its upcoming review of media ownership rules. The likely outcome, should this radically deregulatory agenda be fully realized, is an unprecedented wave of media consolidation, leading to further diminished local news and further worsening of the broader information crisis threatening our democracy.
OMI Conference on Democracy and Free Speech on Oct 15 & 16 in Brussels — REGISTER TO WATCH
The Open Markets Institute and Article 19 will co-host a major conference, “The Future of Democracy: Speech, Thought, Sovereignty, and Power in the Age of Platforms and AI,” October 15-16 in Brussels. The conference will bring together leading thinkers, lawmakers, and advocates to discuss the threats to our democracies and basic liberties posed by today’s dominant tech platforms, the rise of AI, and interference by foreign states. The event promises to be a powerful statement in defense of human liberty and the sovereignty of democratic nations and could not come at a more critical time for the freedom speech. We will be joined by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa; Europe’s Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and the Rule of Law Michael McGrath; former Italian President and former Competition Commissioner Mario Monti; former EVP of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager; U.S. Senator Chris Murphy; Elevation Partners Founder Roger McNamee; French Minister of State for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz, and many other leading voices. Register here for the livestream or to receive a link to the recorded video.
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
- Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn keynoted the Capitol Forum’s 2025 Tech Conference last week in Washington. Lynn spoke about the threats posed to freedom of speech and thought by the power and control over news, information, and debate consolidated in the hands of the dominant tech corporations and a few giant conglomerates. Lynn criticized defenders of liberal democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere for not imposing traditional laws and regulatory models on these corporations, thereby leaving them free to
manipulate what people read, see, buy, and think.
- Promarket published an op-ed coauthored by Open Markets Institute Europe director Max von Thun and OMI’s legal lead in Europe Claire Lavin urging the European Commission to revise its merger guidelines. The op-ed built off of von Thun and
Lavin’s recent submission to the European Commission in which they called for moving away from the consumer welfare standard. “The EU has a chance to not only protect competition at home but to lead the global fight against monopoly and oligarchy and serve as a model for other nations seeking to rein in concentrated corporate power,” they wrote.
- Open Markets transportation analyst Arnav Rao published a review of Doug Most’s Launching Liberty in the Washington Monthly, a book narrating U.S. efforts to undertake a world-class shipbuilding program during World War II. “If the past can teach us anything, it is that revitalizing industry will require an approach far more comprehensive than Trump’s haphazard program of tariffs and port fees,” Rao writes.
- Karina Montoya, senior reporter for the Center for Journalism & Liberty at OMI, published a curtain-raiser on the remedies hearing in the Department of Justice’s case against Google’s monopoly in digital advertising technologies in Tech Policy Press. Montoya explained that the ad tech case differs from the Google search case in that the government, which is calling for a mix of structural separations and behavioral fixes, “built the ad tech case with structural remedies in mind, which can be seen in the filing of the lawsuit in 2023.”
- Courtney Radsch, director of the CJL@OMI, partnered with other leading thinkers and activists to draft a new white paper, “Proactively Developing & Assisting the Workforce in the Age of AI,” which argued that collaboration between government, academia, and industry is crucial and that worker dignity must remain at the center of AI adoption. The paper was presented to Congressional staff last month.
- Open Markets Institute condemned the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling to remove Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter from her post while they consider the case of whether the president can fire the leaders of independent government agencies. “As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent, Commissioner Slaughter was fired without cause and is clearly entitled to her position under the FTC Act and controlling Supreme Court precedent,” Open Markets legal director Sandeep Vaheesan said. Common Dreams covered Vaheesan’s statement.
- Open Markets Institute welcomed Amazon’s $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC following allegations the e-commerce giant tricked customers into enrolling in Prime memberships. “This outcome demonstrates the strength of the FTC’s consumer protection powers, which give the agency leverage to secure meaningful relief and protect the public,” Open Markets legal counsel Tara Pincock said, while urging the agency to go further to address Amazon’s monopolization of key markets, starting with books. “Through its dominant online bookstore, e-book platform, and publishing operations, Amazon exercises extraordinary control over what Americans can read, write, and publish.”
- Claire Kelloway, food systems program manager at Open Markets, published an article in Successful Farming on the impact to country’s agricultural system from the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. “Agricultural trade organizations have expressed concern about the impact of mass deportations on the food supply, particularly on labor-intensive fruit, vegetable, and dairy farms,” she wrote.
- In an essay critiquing the AI-dominant vision of the future espoused by Big Tech, The Baffler cited OMI legal analyst Sandeep Vaheesan’s sharp rebuttal of the Abundance agenda in the Boston Review, citing Vaheesan’s observation that Abundance proponents have more to say about “self-driving electric vehicles than … public transit.”
- The American Prospect quoted Open Markets food systems program manager Claire Kelloway on how Walmart has reshaped grocery competition and put independent grocers at a major disadvantage.“Walmart specifically precipitated this big change in grocery competition,” by ““bullying, bludgeoning, ruthlessly negotiating with suppliers,” Kelloway was cited as saying.
- Tech Policy Press quoted from a report released last year, “Stopping Big Tech from Becoming Big AI: A Roadmap for Using Competition Policy to Keep Artificial Intelligence Open for All," that was coauthored by OMI’s Europe director Max von Thun and senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley on how the legacy Big Tech giants have already monopolized the AI market.
- Digiday quoted Open Markets Europe fellow Cori Crider on the risks of Europe’s caving to U.S. demands to stop regulating Big Tech. “If Europeans suddenly appear to be sacrificing law enforcement on the trade table, we’re never going to be asked to do it just once,” she said. “We will be asked to do it again and again.”
- Popular Resistance references OMI legal director Sandeep Vaheesan’s book Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States in a book review of another book From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. The review highlights how Vaheesan traces the founding vision for utilities to be operated not for profit but in service of the public and how that ideal has eroded over time.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
- The Federal Trade Commission sued Redfin and Zillow over their $100 million rental listing agreement, alleging that the deal illegally suppresses competition in the rentals market. (Reuters)
- European Commission agents raided Sanofi as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the French pharmaceutical firm violated EU antitrust laws by engaging in exclusionary practice with their seasonal flu vaccines. (Financial Times)
- German enterprise software conglomerate SAP is being investigated by the European Commission over complaints the corporation has made it unduly burdensome for customers to switch to competing services. (Reuters)
- Italy’s competition authority issued a cumulative fine of nearly €1 billion to six oil companies over allegations the corporations orchestrated a cartel to artificially inflate fuel prices. (Bloomberg)
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📈 VITAL STAT:
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley — Journalist and bestselling author Jacob Silverman dives into the hard-right cultural turn in Silicon Valley and the way it has coincided with the increasing control tech monopolies are asserting over our politics and economy. In his account, Silverman uses the radicalization of Elon Musk and the destructive campaign released by DOGE as a case study for how concentrated corporate power and unchecked executive power have fused into one urgent threat.
Pre- Order Chief Economist Brian Callaci's new book:
Open Markets Institute’s chief economist Brian Callaci will publish his first book Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy on April 20 through University of Chicago Press. The book offers a sharp critique of the franchise model used by many fast food chains and shows how franchisors have altered the legal treatment of corporations in their favor through a decades-long crusade of lobbying and litigation. Pre-order the book here.
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