The Federal Communications Commission voted on August 6, 2026, to get rid of a rule that limited how many TV stations a single company could own across the country.

The old rule, in place for decades, said that no broadcast owner could hold stations reaching more than 39 percent of all US television households. Think of it like a speed limit on how big any one company could get in the TV business. FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty voted to remove that limit; Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez voted against it. Instead of the 39 percent ceiling, the FCC said it will now review each proposed merger one at a time to decide whether it serves the public interest. The Verge

The vote formalizes a direction the commission signaled in July, when it announced plans to vote on replacing the ownership rule with the case-by-case standard. The FCC had previously asked for public comment on whether to modify, keep, or eliminate the cap and a related policy called the UHF discount, which let broadcasters count certain stations as reaching only half their actual audience when calculating whether they were under the limit. FCC

Gomez argued in her dissent that the FCC does not have the authority to lift the cap, because Congress wrote the 39 percent threshold into a 2004 law and only Congress can remove it. That legal argument may surface in court, and the rule's elimination already has a live test case working through the federal judiciary.

In March, Carr approved the $6.2 billion merger of two large broadcasting companies, Nexstar and Tegna, agreeing to waive the ownership cap to allow the deal. A federal judge subsequently paused the merger while a group of state attorneys general challenged it. Now the cap that required a waiver no longer exists as a rule. The Verge

Carr framed the repeal as a survival measure for local broadcasters. He pointed to the collapse of local newspapers as a warning of what happens when traditional media companies cannot consolidate, and argued that the cap was an artificial constraint preventing broadcasters from competing with social media and streaming platforms that can reach "100 percent of the country." Reuters The Verge

The timeline moved quickly. As recently as October 28, 2025, Carr said the commission had made no decision on whether to lift the cap. By March 2026, he was signaling interest in accelerating broadcast license reviews, which are next scheduled for renewal in October 2028. Carr indicated he could speed up those reviews. Reuters Reuters

The ownership cap vote arrives during a period of active regulatory moves at the FCC under Carr. Also in August, the commission barred Chinese imports of new humanoid and quadruped robots, framing the restriction as a measure to boost domestic production. Reuters

The broader structural change worth tracking is the shift from a fixed number to discretionary review. Under the old rule, a broadcaster knew with certainty whether a proposed purchase would cross the 39 percent line. Under the new framework, the same deal's viability depends on how the FCC applies its public interest standard, which is inherently fact-dependent and subject to the political makeup of the commission at the time of review.

That introduces a different kind of uncertainty for dealmakers. A numerical cap is straightforward: you are under it or over it. A public interest test is subjective, and the criteria can shift with each change of administration. Broadcasters who argued the cap was outdated may find that the replacement, while removing the ceiling, does not remove regulatory risk. It relocates it.

The legal challenge from state attorneys general in the Nexstar-Tegna case will be an early signal of how courts view the FCC's new approach. If Gomez's argument that only Congress can lift the cap gains traction in litigation, the commission's case-by-case framework could face judicial constraints even after the rule is formally gone.

In my view, the FCC's replacement framework gives the agency significant latitude to decide what counts as a permissible deal. Whether that latitude produces predictable, consistent outcomes for broadcasters, investors, and the public will depend on how Carr and future chairs exercise it. The 39 percent cap was a blunt instrument. Its replacement is not yet a sharp one.