On August 6, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 along party lines to rescind the rule barring any single company from owning broadcast stations that reach more than 39 percent of U.S. television households, replacing the hard cap with case-by-case review. The commission has limited local-station ownership since 1941, and the 39 percent figure has been in place since 2004.
The catch is that the 39 percent cap is written into law: after the FCC raised the cap to 45 percent in 2003, Congress set it at 39 percent in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004. Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, contends the FCC has the statutory authority to eliminate it. The commission's lone Democrat, Anna Gomez, voted no and argued the move is illegal because only Congress can lift a limit Congress imposed; legal challenges are expected.
The practical effect is to accelerate media consolidation. The vote follows the FCC's March decision to waive the 39 percent rule to approve Nexstar's roughly $3.54 billion acquisition of Tegna, a deal that CNBC and Variety report would give Nexstar reach across about 80 percent of U.S. TV households. A court in April halted the companies' integration in a lawsuit brought by eight state attorneys general, with trial set for July 2027. Carr said, “We should stop hamstringing this one segment of the broader market with outdated restrictions.” Gomez countered that the FCC “has no business balancing the ideological content of the news in the first place” (see Trump's FCC Chairman Demands 'Pro-America Programming,' Declares 'Fake News' Loses Legal Protections, and Moves to Eliminate Media Ownership Caps).
Update (October 2, 2026): On October 1, the FCC released its 77-page Report and Order formally repealing the cap. The commission argued that statutory directives, “including those in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004, instructed the Commission only to 'modify its rules,'” and that “it is fully within the Commission's statutory authority to repeal the rule.” The order said eliminating the cap would be more efficient than “granting waivers for transactions that serve the public interest, like the recent merger between Nexstar Media Inc. and TEGNA Inc.”
Update (October 6, 2026): Cable industry groups asked the FCC on October 2 to stay its repeal and said they will sue in a federal appeals court once the order is published in the Federal Register, Ars Technica reported. Their petition argues the FCC cannot change the cap because the 2004 law “references the 39 percent Cap as statutory, not regulatory,” and that bigger station groups will demand higher retransmission fees, resulting in “higher monthly TV bills for consumers.”