Your Local News Anchors Might Welcome Their New Corporate Overlords
When late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! came back from its temporary “break,” viewers in many markets discovered something odd: Kimmel wasn’t back on their local stations. In markets with ABC affiliates owned by media giants Sinclair and Nexstar, stations skipped the show entirely, substituting their own content instead.
This incident highlights a bigger question that regulators can no longer ignore: as fewer companies control more local TV stations, who decides what shows get aired?
With Nexstar’s announced plans to acquire Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must once again face a familiar question: Are the agency’s decades-old media-ownership rules protecting local programming (especially journalism) or hastening its demise?
This question lies at the heart of the modern localism debate, where the FCC’s structural approach to preserving community-focused broadcasting confronts a rapidly changing economic reality that has outpaced the regulatory framework.