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Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy sounded the alarm this week, calling the FCC’s move to lift the 39 percent national TV ownership cap a brazen violation of federal law and a looming disaster for conservative voices across America. Ruddy warned that government officials who quietly hand sweeping media power to big-city broadcasters are effectively gutting local control and tilting the information battlefield against everyday patriots.
The 39 percent cap is not some bureaucratic whim; it is a statutory limit set by Congress to prevent exactly this kind of consolidation, and respected legal scholars now say the FCC has no authority to rewrite it on the agency’s own. Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick filed an ex parte opinion arguing that the Commission would be crossing a bright-line statutory boundary if it tries to raise or evade the cap without Congress — a point the FCC can’t ignore if it respects the rule of law.
At the center of the storm is Nexstar’s proposed takeover of Tegna, a deal pitched as a necessary consolidation to compete with Big Tech but in reality a power grab that would give a single broadcaster reach far beyond the statutory limit. Depending on the accounting, the merged company could control hundreds of stations and reach a majority of American households — a concentration of influence that should make every freedom-loving American uneasy.
Ruddy was blunt about the political danger: when a few corporate outfits can dominate the local news menus in dozens of markets, conservative viewpoints and grassroots concerns will be steamrolled by coastal elites. This is not theoretical — Americans still rely on local television for news, and handing centralized gatekeepers the keys to those channels hands them the power to shape elections and public opinion in ways that benefit their preferred ideology.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr insists the agency is considering these changes to help broadcasters survive against unregulated tech giants, but that rationale collapses when the cure is worse than the disease. You don’t fight Big Tech by creating another unaccountable megacorp with the power to control local reporting; you protect competition and local voices by enforcing the law, not ignoring it.
The legal experts backing this pushback are clear: the Commission cannot lawfully resurrect tricks like the UHF discount or sidecar loopholes to pretend consolidation stays under the cap. Fitzpatrick’s filing points out that courts have narrowed agency deference, and that makes any FCC attempt to rewrite a statute by administrative fiat especially vulnerable to challenge. Conservatives who believe in limited government should cheer a strict reading of the statute and demand Congress, not regulators, make any change.
If you believe in free markets, local control, and honest competition, now is the time to act — call your representatives, make your voice heard, and tell them you will not stand by while a handful of broadcasters absorb the lifeblood of local news. Ruddy and other conservative leaders are urging grassroots mobilization because this is about more than corporate deals; it’s about preserving the marketplace of ideas that lets Americans govern themselves.
We are at a crossroads: either Congress upholds the 39 percent limit and defends the decentralization Reagan championed, or the FCC hands unchecked influence to media conglomerates whose priorities often sit far from Main Street. Patriots should reject stealth consolidation dressed up as deregulation and insist that any change to our information ecosystem be made openly, in Congress, with the public watching.
