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Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

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Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#51

Post by wmf »

jyoung8607 wrote: post #44
wmf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I'm talking about though. We should have repacked ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox onto a single channel.

Seventeen years ago, when we transitioned, the state of available and deployed equipment, codecs, and home receivers would not have permitted it. I mean sure, you could pack four streams into one 6MHz channel. They could even be "HD" insofar as the transmitted stream is 720p or 1080i. The result would have been MPEG-2 program streams of about 4.5Mbit each instead of about 18-19Mbit (assuming no other subchannels). Th…

If you limit it to 480i I think 4.5 Mbps would be fine. If you use a cherrypicker sports could burst to a higher bitrate.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#52

Post by Marsymars »

erickhill wrote: post #32
trollbridge wrote: post #7

Broadcast TV seems laughably irrelevant. It’s difficult to find official numbers, but under 1% of US households have no cable, satellite TV, home Internet, or a cell phone. The latter two are how people consume video and TV to a large degree today. In exchange, we have a great deal of spectrum tied up for terrestrial TV, much of which goes to running infomercials or else is surreptitiously leased for terrestrial data…

Except for live sports, for which it is still vastly superior - no subscription required.

Funny how this has diverged in Canada/USA which otherwise have broadly similar broadcast markets in many respects. The broadcast stations have been gutted of sports content in favour of a couple of specialty channels which are a combined $70/month for streaming/app subscriptions.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#53

Post by kurthr »

magicalist wrote: post #26

Note that Tom Delay of all people (remember that guy? I'm old and I'd say barely) wrote an opposing op ed saying that even though he supports the change that this is contrary to the governing statute that he helped write, which explicitly bars the FCC from changing this limit https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/can-trump-fcc-re...

Crime is legal (if you're in the right group).

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#54

Post by jyoung8607 »

wmf wrote: post #51
jyoung8607 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seventeen years ago, when we transitioned, the state of available and deployed equipment, codecs, and home receivers would not have permitted it. I mean sure, you could pack four streams into one 6MHz channel. They could even be "HD" insofar as the transmitted stream is 720p or 1080i. The result would have been MPEG-2 program streams of about 4.5Mbit each instead of about 18-19Mbit (assuming no other subchannels). Th…

If you limit it to 480i I think 4.5 Mbps would be fine. If you use a cherrypicker sports could burst to a higher bitrate.

The original transition (and release of extra frequencies) was a delicate and painful process with lots of involved parties who had to spend lots of money to make it happen. Politically speaking, it could only happen if everyone involved saw some actual benefit from the change.

If you got into a time machine and tried your plan two decades ago, the conversations would have gone something like this:

-----

Government: "Hey broadcaster, we need you to throw out and upgrade all your broadcast equipment that's working just fine today."

Broadcaster: "Why?"

Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."

Broadcaster: "Why else?"

Government: "That's really it."

Broadcaster: "How about instead, I take a little bit of that money you're asking me to spend, and give it to your political opponent's campaign?"

-----

Government: "Hey citizens, we need you to buy a new TV or buy an adapter for your current TV that's currently working just fine."

Citizen: "Why?"

Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."

Citizen: "Why else?"

Government: "That's really it."

Citizen: "How about instead, I vote for the opposition candidate who says he'll let me keep my TV and my money?"

-----

We're able to juggle broadcast frequencies more easily after the transition. Not only did we shrink the broadcast frequency range at the time of transition, we did it again about ten years ago with far less pain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_wireless_sp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_sp...

TL;DR: 480i would have been an absolute non-starter.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#55

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Brendan Carr will need to go to prison too, I suppose. There’s nothing in the universe of an argument for why he should be allowed to overturn the will of Congress here, he’s just a petty criminal who doesn’t think he has to follow the rules. 2029 is gonna be a tough year.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#56

Post by londons_explore »

> In a 2-1 vote, the FCC repealed a 22-year-old rule holding that a company cannot own stations that reach more than a combined 39% of the U.S. television audience.

This seems like a very odd rule. What about things like CNN? Aren't they available to 100% of households?

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#57

Post by warkdarrior »

londons_explore wrote: post #56

> In a 2-1 vote, the FCC repealed a 22-year-old rule holding that a company cannot own stations that reach more than a combined 39% of the U.S. television audience. This seems like a very odd rule. What about things like CNN? Aren't they available to 100% of households?

This is about over-the-air/broadcast stations (e.g., ABC/NBC/CBS affiliates), not cable stations like CNN.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#58

Post by warkdarrior »

disposition2 wrote: post #47
ilovetux wrote: post #34

Didn't the supreme court recently overturn the Chevron Doctrine? Doesn't that mean agencies like this are not free to set their own rules when a law is ambiguous? And isnt the cap on number of households reached actually codified unambiguously in federal law? Seems to me like this should not be allowed to happen. Let me know if I am wrong.

If this Baltimore Sun article is accurate, it's worse than that as it sounds like the FCC is overriding a law passed by Congress and not just (re)setting a rule. > The 39% cap was established by Congress in 2004. 1. https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/08/06/federal-communicatio...

And what is this Congress going to do about it? Nothing.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#59

Post by Finnucane »

londons_explore wrote: post #56

> In a 2-1 vote, the FCC repealed a 22-year-old rule holding that a company cannot own stations that reach more than a combined 39% of the U.S. television audience. This seems like a very odd rule. What about things like CNN? Aren't they available to 100% of households?

The FCC mainly regulates broadcast. CNN is cable. Also, there's a difference between a station being in more than 39% of households and being 39% of the total market. Other stations still compete with CNN.

Re: Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

#60

Post by TheAdamist »

wmf wrote: post #28
jyoung8607 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already widely done in the US. If you plug in an antenna and scan for local channels, what used to be one analog TV channel on colloquially-named "channel 7" in the defined channel 7 frequency range will now be seen as "channel 7-1" which is often (but not always!) actually broadcast on the old frequency. During the ATSC transition, it was important to retain the branding and consumer memory of "channel 7" eve…

That's not what I'm talking about though. We should have repacked ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox onto a single channel.

Atsc 3.0 does this in a lot of areas, it is in my area, all the channels are multiplexed from one broadcast, although it's hard to tell on the tv since you get the virtual channel numbers that are different and the same as the atsc 1.0 channels
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