President-elect Trump’s FCC Expected to Relax Media Ownership Limits

The Federal Communications Commission is likely to change course and prioritize lifting newspaper and television station ownership restrictions when it comes under Republican control in 2017, agency watchers said. Industry analysts who track the FCC expect Republicans to relax rules once they assume control of the agency in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. That would include loosening restrictions on how many broadcast properties one company can own in any given market and lifting the ban on media companies owning newspapers and broadcast TV stations in the same market, a practice known as cross-ownership.

The FCC declined to ease those restrictions in its most recent review of media ownership rules in August. Another restriction — an ownership cap preventing one entity from owning enough stations to reach more than 39 percent of all U.S. households — is up to Congress to change. “A pro-business Republican administration led by Donald Trump is expected to push for more deregulation,” Geetha Ranganathan, a Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst, wrote in a Nov. 10 note. “For broadcasters, this may translate to relaxation of the 39-percent ownership cap and elimination of the broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership ban.”