After asking its viewers to encourage the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to eliminate certain media ownership restrictions, Nexstar Media Group has now called on many of its own local media executives to do the same.
On Friday, the largest independent owner of broadcast TV stations in the country filed a 240-page dossier consisting of letters written by dozens of its station managers, urging the FCC to eliminate federal ownership rules that limit how many TV stations broadcasters like Nexstar may directly own.
Under current rules, Nexstar and other broadcasters cannot directly own local TV stations that reach more than 39 percent of American households. Some, including Nexstar, sidestep these rules by bankrolling third parties to acquire local TV stations and their licenses, then forming shared services agreements that allow larger broadcast TV owners to exert operational and financial control over those owned and licensed to other entities on paper.
Nexstar-owned stations include KTLA (Channel 5) in Los Angeles and WGN-TV (Channel 9) in Chicago. It also operates WPIX (Channel 11) in New York City through a shared services agreement with Mission Broadcasting.
Over the past few weeks, Nexstar and others have grown more vocal about eliminating broadcast station ownership rules entirely, claiming they are outdated in today’s media environment where “Big Tech” firms like Google and Netflix create numerous business challenges while being allowed to scale their operations and reach consumers without limitation.
While Nexstar has taken its advocacy to the FCC in the past, it is now one of the few broadcasters that has encouraged others to rally for its cause. Earlier this month, dozens of TV stations owned or controlled by Nexstar began airing news segments that ultimately encouraged viewers to visit a Nexstar-owned website, where pre-written social media posts directed at the FCC and effectively encouraging the elimination of broadcast station ownership rules were available to deploy on a viewer’s X (formerly Twitter) account with the press of a button. (The website also allows viewers to write their own message.)
Now, Nexstar has encouraged its local TV station general managers to do the same, providing dozens of letters to the FCC through which its executives have encouraged the agency to re-evaluate “outdated regulations” that prevent Nexstar from growing larger.
The letters reviewed by The Desk include location-specific information and data, with audience viewership figures for local newscasts and anecdotes about how a station is serving its community. But many of them contain common phrases — including one that claims to justify the elimination of local broadcast TV ownership rules by noting the prominence of local TV journalism a ta time when “local newspapers and radio stations” are forced to cut back on their operations due to varying business challenges in their industries.
The line about local newspapers and radio stations was present in more than 30 different letters written by station general managers at Nexstar’s request. The words “without regulatory relief” appears in more than 40 letters, all of which use the phrase to claim that local TV stations won’t be able to make financial investments in local news unless ownership restrictions are eliminated. And the words “the obvious constraints” appear in nearly three dozen letters in paragraphs that complain about the “unlimited reach of Big Tech” relative to how local TV stations are allowed to scale, given the ownership restrictions.
A source familiar with how the letters were obtained said Nexstar reached out to station general managers two weeks ago with a strong request that they provide letters in support of the company’s efforts to influence the FCC’s thinking on broadcast ownership restrictions, and were provided a “template” on how those letters should look. They were also provided guidance on how to “make it their own,” the source said, to include incorporating station-specific anecdotes and data, but were otherwise “not told what to write.”
Nexstar joins a growing list of broadcasters and industry trade groups urging the FCC to repeal broadcast ownership regulations. Earlier this month, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) petitioned the agency to eliminate those same ownership rules. Last week, the FCC began soliciting public comments on that petition.
