We’ve Tried This Before: Local TV’s Familiar Consolidation Argument

There is something oddly familiar about the argument for greater consolidation of local television. Broadcasters are under pressure. Their business is being disrupted. Local journalism is expensive. Therefore, the reasoning goes, station owners need to become larger so they can operate more efficiently — and somehow emerge with more resources for the newsrooms those efficiencies are supposed to protect.

Perhaps. But American media has conducted versions of this experiment before.

Local newspapers consolidated as their economics deteriorated, producing giant chains increasingly controlled by financially driven owners such as Alden Global Capital, adept at extracting profit from shrinking local institutions. Radio underwent its own consolidation revolution after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, creating enormous national groups whose histories include billions in debt and repeated trips through bankruptcy court.

So before assuming bigger television companies will necessarily produce stronger local journalism, it is worth asking: Why would this time be different?

Broadcasters have legitimate reasons to want scale. Local TV faces declining audiences, advertising pressure, cord-cutting, reverse-compensation obligations and competitors with vastly greater resources. Bigger groups can spread costs, centralize technology and negotiate more effectively with networks and distributors.

But somewhere between “scale creates efficiencies” and “scale strengthens local news,” the argument makes a convenient leap.

Scale Is Not A Newsroom

Consolidation creates value largely by eliminating duplication: centralized back-office operations, common technology platforms, consolidated sales functions and fewer layers of management.

Local journalism stubbornly resists that model. Somebody still has to attend the school-board meeting, cover City Hall, report from the courthouse or show up when the factory closes or the river floods. Those functions cannot all be centralized three states away without eventually changing what “local” means.

Larger owners can invest heavily in journalism, and some do. But scale creates the capacity to invest in local news; it does not create the incentive.

Newspapers offer a useful warning. Their collapse was driven by forces far beyond ownership: the collapse of classified advertising, declining circulation, online migration and the capture of digital advertising by technology platforms.

But consolidation did not reverse those trends. In many cases it produced a different model: acquire distressed local properties, centralize operations, reduce costs and extract whatever profitability remained.

A study of 211 major newspapers from 2005 through 2022 found that papers acquired by investment-oriented owners subsequently employed significantly fewer reporters and editors, with especially large reductions among political and general-assignment journalists.

Nearly 40% of America’s local newspapers have disappeared since 2005, and tens of millions of Americans now live with limited access to consistent local news.

Alden did not invent the Internet. But Alden-style economics should make us wary of assuming greater financial scale naturally produces greater journalistic investment.

Sometimes the company survives while the newsroom shrinks.

What Radio Learned About Scale

Then there is radio, where Washington effectively conducted the consolidation experiment 30 years ago.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminated the national radio ownership limit and loosened local-market restrictions, triggering a wave of consolidation. Clear Channel eventually amassed more than 800 stations. If massive ownership scale were itself the cure for a structurally challenged local-media business, commercial radio should be Exhibit A for the defense.

It is “clearly” not.

Clear Channel was taken private in a heavily leveraged 2008 buyout, later became iHeartMedia and entered Chapter 11 a decade later carrying more than $20 billion in debt. Audacy — enlarged by Entercom’s acquisition of CBS Radio — filed for Chapter 11 in 2024 and emerged after dramatically reducing its debt. Cumulus filed for bankruptcy in 2017, emerged in 2018 and returned to Chapter 11 in 2026.

Consolidation did not cause all of radio’s problems. Streaming, changing listening habits, advertising weakness and some impressively leveraged balance sheets all played their parts. But that is precisely the point.

Radio got scale. Lots of it. What scale could not do was repeal technological disruption, reverse audience fragmentation or guarantee stronger local programming.

If Local News Is The Promise, Measure The Results

Broadcast television needs new economics. Stations need leverage against powerful networks, streamers and distributors, plus capital for technology, digital products, local sports and the infrastructure required to remain relevant.

The question is why local journalism has become the nearly automatic public-interest justification for getting bigger.

If stronger local news is genuinely the intended result, it should be measurable after consolidation. How many newsroom employees remain? How many reporters are based in the market? How much locally originated news and public-affairs programming is produced? What happens to investigative units, statehouse coverage and smaller-market reporting?

And what do those numbers look like three or five years after the deal closes?

That would not be anti-consolidation per se; it would simply connect the industry’s argument to its promised outcome.

Broadcasters may, indeed, need more scale to survive the next phase of television’s evolution. But if stronger local journalism is the public-interest case for getting bigger, it should be treated as more than a talking point. It should be a measurable commitment.

Newspapers and radio have already shown that scale can preserve companies without necessarily preserving the local institutions inside them. We’ve heard this argument before. This time, if local news is the promise, we should measure what actually gets delivered.

Local News To Peruse

• Sinclair Seeks FCC Approval To Acquire CW Network Affiliate In Michigan - Matthew Keys [TheDesk.net]

• Are Multiple Networks Per Station The Future? - Hank Price [TVNewsCheck]

• Gray, Scripps And Sinclair Tout A ‘Goldmine’ In Spectrum Opportunities - George Winslow [TVTech]

• LPTV Advocates Petition FCC For Voluntary 5G Broadcasts - Tom Butts [TVTech]