Eliminating The FCC (And Other Regulatory Fantasies)
The most revealing regulatory policy documents are often not those issued by government itself, but those produced by its ideological enablers.
The American Enterprise Institute, a well-funded Washington think tank that reliably champions free-market deregulation, recently published one such document: a paper by University of Florida economist Mark Jamison arguing that the Federal Communications Commission should be disbanded altogether. What appears to be a technocratic critique of “obsolete” regulation is better understood as something else entirely: the logical endpoint of a broader campaign in which major broadcasters, trade groups, and an array of curiously allied commentators are seeking to bend, hollow out, or erase the rules that constrain their power.
The “Logic” Of Elimination
At the heart of the AEI paper (Disbanding The Federal Communications Commission) is a simple claim: the FCC has “outlived the economic and technological conditions that justified its creation.” Monopoly telephony is said to be gone, spectrum scarcity obsolete, and broadcasting waved away as “no longer an industry” warranting sector-specific oversight. In an age of broadband abundance and digital convergence, the FCC’s core functions — common carrier regulation and broadcast licensing — are framed as anachronisms. Worse, the agency is portrayed as partisan, captured by politics rather than expertise, and therefore unworthy of continued existence.
The proposed remedy is sweeping: shutter the FCC, scatter its remaining functions across the federal government, and let markets govern communications instead. It is a clean, confident argument — and a deeply flawed one, not only economically but institutionally and democratically.
The Presumption Of Deregulation
The proposal becomes far less abstract when viewed against what is actually happening in broadcast policy today. Nexstar has spent years pushing the limits of the 39 percent national television ownership cap — and is now seeking to blow past it entirely with its proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA, which would require either regulatory waivers or a reinterpretation of existing law.
If completed, the deal would give a single company stations reaching roughly 80 percent of U.S. television households. Nexstar contends that, using the FCC’s long-controversial “UHF discount”—an accounting fiction that cuts the reach of UHF stations in half despite the digital transition having erased their technical disadvantage — the combined company would reach “only” 54 percent of households, still well above the statutory limit. Either way, the transaction plainly relies on the FCC waiving or dismantling one of the last meaningful structural safeguards against excessive television consolidation.
Even before this proposed merger, the Commission fined Nexstar and its sidecar partner, Mission Broadcasting, for using nominally independent shell companies to exercise de facto control over stations and evade ownership limits, ultimately forcing divestitures. The enforcement action documented just how easily paper “independence” can be weaponized to defeat the rules in practice.
Public-interest groups now warn that approving the Nexstar–TEGNA merger would further normalize treating statutory ownership caps as optional guidelines rather than binding law. Seen in that context, AEI’s call to abolish the FCC reads less like a radical outlier and more like the bluntest articulation of a logic already at work — one that, in more polite settings, steadily converts hard regulatory guardrails into soft suggestions.
Misreading Market Power
At its core, Jamison’s case rests on a seductive but dangerous assumption: that technological dynamism dissolves power, and that when markets become complex enough, regulation becomes illegitimate. This is libertarian absolutism masquerading as institutional analysis. Communications markets have changed dramatically since 1934 — but change does not negate governance; instead, it redefines its necessity. Dynamic markets do not eliminate power. They often obscure and concentrate it.
Nexstar’s scale, its use of sidecars, and its leverage in retransmission negotiations — which have fueled repeated blackouts and complaints from pay-TV operators and consumer advocates — show how ownership concentration can be used to dictate terms far beyond any single local market. Broadband access remains capital-intensive and geographically constrained; the presence of streaming platforms or new delivery technologies does not magically produce meaningful competition everywhere or neutralize gatekeeping power.
Jamison’s paper argues that “market boundaries are too fluid” to sustain common carrier obligations or sector-specific doctrines. But this is not insight; it is abdication. Financial markets are fluid and regulated. Environmental harms cross boundaries and are regulated. Complexity has never been a credible argument for dismantling institutions of expertise. It is the argument for them. When broadcasters claim that digital competition makes ownership caps obsolete, they are making the same move: declare the map too messy for structural rules, then demand that those rules be erased.
Ownership Rules Exist For A Reason
This deregulatory turn is clearest in the assault on broadcasting’s ownership framework. The National Association of Broadcasters is urging the FCC to eliminate radio caps outright and sharply relax television limits, arguing that legacy rules impose “asymmetric” burdens compared with largely unregulated technology platforms. Nexstar’s bid for TEGNA leans heavily on that narrative, casting the 39 percent cap as an outdated relic rather than a clear expression of Congressional intent.
Groups like Free Press counter that this would create de facto local monopolies in dozens of markets, further hollow out already thin newsrooms, and concentrate control over local information. Against that backdrop, AEI’s claim that broadcasting “is no longer an industry” reads less like analysis than political convenience.
Over-the-air television remains the only universally free video platform in the United States, central to emergency alerts, local news, and political advertising — especially for rural and lower-income households, where broadcast remains uniquely dominant. Economic stress is a reason to take those public-interest obligations (more) seriously — not to pretend they never mattered.
The FCC Is Part Of The Problem (But It’s Also Part Of The Solution)
The paper’s critique of politicization is equally selective. The FCC is faulted for allegedly aligning with Democratic administrations, yet the proposed solution is to dissolve an independent commission and transfer authority to executive agencies more directly subject to White House control. That is not depoliticization; it is consolidation.
Recent fights over the Nexstar–TEGNA deal, including allegations that deregulatory flexibility is being traded for favorable coverage, underscore the danger of weakening the institutional buffers designed to keep communications policy from swinging wildly with electoral cycles. Eliminating a contested institution because it is contested is like demolishing a courthouse because trials are contentious.
Most striking, however, is what the AEI argument largely omits: democracy. Communications policy governs the infrastructure through which political speech circulates and communities understand themselves. The broadcasters seeking consolidation are the same entities that decide whether local investigative reporting survives, whether debates and civic meetings receive airtime, and whether political narratives are interrogated or merely relayed. By reducing legitimacy to a narrow theory of market efficiency, the AEI paper discards the public-interest rationale that has underpinned spectrum licensing and media ownership limits for decades.
Reforming Communications Regulation
Disbanding the FCC would not usher in a neutral, market-driven utopia. It would privatize governance, weaken accountability, and accelerate the erosion of already fragile media institutions. The same is true, more gradually, of treating ownership limits and public-interest obligations as antiques to be waived whenever a large enough company asks nicely.
The real failure is not the FCC’s existence, but Congress’s decades-long refusal to modernize its mandate for a converged media system. Institutional reform is hard. Institutional vandalism is easy. The AEI proposal chooses the latter — and in doing so, reveals how recklessly this current deregulatory moment treats the foundations of a functioning democratic communications system.
Local News To Peruse
Trump FCC Threatens To Enforce Equal-Time Rule On Late-Night Talk Shows - Jon Brodkin [Ars Technica]
Nexstar’s Big Payback - Craig Aaron [Free Press]
WBGU-TV In Ohio To Drop PBS Affiliation - George Winslow [TVTech]
Main Street Sports Group Worth Saving For Teams And Strategics - Corey Leff [John Wall Street]
Sinclair Renews Push For Scripps Merger Amid Board Rejection - Dak Dillon [NCS | NewscastStudio]
AM Broadcasters Petition FCC For Expanded FM Translator Access - Cameron Coats [Radio Ink]
