Nathan Leamer: The Next Step in the Media Course Correction

The collapse of trust in American journalism was no accident. It was the byproduct of a decades-long institutional drift toward a centralized media order—one dominated by bicoastal power centers and a managerial class increasingly detached from the communities they claim to represent. This centralization has hollowed out the "little platoons" of our media landscape, replacing local accountability with a homogenized, nationalized narrative.

Since President Donald Trump’s return to office, a necessary course correction has begun. As Rob Bluey at the Daily Signal has noted, the administration is moving to dismantle the regulatory assumptions of the "Acheson era" Administrative State. From the White House Briefing Room to the Federal Communications Commission, the aim is clear: To revive the mediating institutions of American life by loosening the federal shackles that have long favored national behemoths over local voices.

One necessary next step to continue this endeavor is to reform the FCC’s national broadcast ownership cap.

Brendan Carr, now chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has indicated that the Commission is reexamining legacy regulations that have outlived their purpose. Few rules better illustrate the problem than the national audience reach cap, which continues to constrain local broadcasters as if they were operating in a pre-digital, pre-streaming world.

The FCC’s national audience reach cap is a relic of a bygone era, reflecting a legacy fear of broadcast scale while ignoring the contemporary reality of digital hegemony. By capping the growth of local broadcasters, federal policy has effectively gifted a monopoly on attention to Silicon Valley’s algorithmic giants. We are currently living under a regime of asymmetric regulation: local stations, rooted in their communities and bound by public interest obligations, are micromanaged by Washington, while unaccountable streaming platforms and tech conglomerates are permitted to expand without limit.

Reforming this cap is not an endorsement of "Big Media"; it is a defense of the local against the global. It would allow entities like Nexstar and Sinclair the scale necessary to survive the predatory pressures of the digital age. This is not centralization; it is the reinforcement of localism through economic viability.

Unsurprisingly, resistance to reform has come not from local communities, but from entrenched interests that benefit from a narrow and protected media landscape. The most vocal opponent to this reform comes from entrenched interests masquerading as defenders of the public good.

Chris Ruddy of Newsmax has positioned himself as an opponent of deregulation, yet his objections are transparently commercial rather than principled. By lobbying to keep the broadcast cap in place, Ruddy is effectively asking the federal government to protect his market share from the threat of robust local competition. Clearly Newsmax is an important conservative media platform but regulatory arbitrage should not create barriers for other conservative entrepreneurs and voices from entering the broadcast marketplace.  

Even more revealing is the "unholy alliance" between these corporate incumbents and progressive activist groups like Mi Familia Vota. This convergence of interests highlights a shared desire to maintain a managed, centralized flow of information. For the Left, it is about ideological control; for the corporate gatekeeper, it is about avoiding the rigors of a truly competitive marketplace. Both, however, stand in direct opposition to a media landscape defined by genuine pluralism.

A healthier understanding of regulation is needed, one rooted in process and solemn policymaking. Recent actions by the FCC already acknowledge the widening gap between distrusted national media and locally embedded broadcasters. In that sense, broadcast cap reform is not a break from the current trajectory. It is its logical continuation.

A media course correction that stops short of structural reform will not endure. Meaningful media reform must go beyond mere critiques of bias. It must restore the structural conditions under which local life can flourish independently of the bicoastal elite.

Nathan Leamer is a former policy advisor to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

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