WASHINGTON, D.C. – NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt testified today before the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing titled "We Interrupt This Program: Media Ownership in the Digital Age."
Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:
Good morning, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the Committee. My name is Curtis LeGeyt, and I am proud to testify on behalf of NAB and our nearly 1,300 free, local, over-the-air television stations that serve your communities every day.
When the FCC first imposed national and local television ownership limits, Franklin Roosevelt was President. Now, nine decades later, those same rules still prevent broadcasters – and broadcasters alone – from owning more than two stations in any local market, and from reaching more than 39% of American TV households.
These outdated regulations distort today’s video and advertising marketplace. They advantage giant tech platforms, global streaming services, pay-TV providers, and national cable programmers, while placing local broadcasters at a severe disadvantage.
In a digital media marketplace dominated by Google, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Meta and TikTok, ownership restrictions that apply only to broadcasters are no longer rational or sustainable. They prevent broadcasters from achieving the scale necessary to compete for audiences, programming, advertising revenues and investment capital.
As a result, your local stations remain hobbled by rules designed for the analog era – rules that directly undermine broadcasters’ ability to provide our essential public service that remains free and universally accessible to our viewers.
During recent crippling winter storms across vast swaths of the country, and during devastating floods in both Texas and Washington State, it was local broadcasters – not global streamers or national pay-TV channels – that remained on the ground and on the air in those communities, providing life-saving information to their viewers.
And beyond times of emergency, broadcasters are delivering the fact-based, most-trusted journalism that keeps your constituents and communities informed and connected.
Unfortunately, this local journalism is facing growing financial pressure. Fewer than half of TV stations now report that their local news operations are profitable. Facing ever-rising news production costs and declining ad revenues, some broadcasters are simply unable to continue maintaining their own separate news operations.
Without modernizing these ownership rules, local television news – the last bastion of truly local journalism in many communities – will suffer the same fate as thousands of local newspapers.
Some argue that allowing broadcasters to achieve greater scale would reduce local news. The data shows just the opposite. Over the past decade, as broadcasters gained modest additional scale, the number of local news telecasts and hours of locally produced news increased substantially. From 2011 to 2023, local news telecasts increased by more than 40%, and total hours of local news grew nearly 50%. Scale allows broadcasters to invest more heavily in journalism, not less. But it’s not enough.
Outdated ownership rules also limit broadcasters’ ability to provide viewers access to marquee sports and entertainment. Instead of subscribing to a new streaming service every time they want to watch a game, viewers overwhelmingly prefer to watch sports on broadcast TV. However, keeping broadcasters artificially small makes it harder to compete for increasingly expensive sports rights against our unregulated streaming rivals. Broadcasting’s share of viewership is already less than half our streaming competitors. This decline will continue as premium sports content further migrates behind streaming paywalls.
In conclusion, localism is a vital, but expensive American value. Competitively hobbled TV stations lacking sufficient resources will not provide quality local journalism, emergency information, valued sports and programming that your communities depend upon.
For these reasons, we urge Congress to support the FCC’s efforts to eliminate the outdated broadcast TV ownership restrictions that no longer serve the public interest. I want to personally thank the many members of this Committee – as well as President Trump – who have publicly supported us on this issue. Congress should flatly reject arguments from a single national programmer subject to no similar restrictions and who invests zero dollars in your local communities.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to your questions.
The National Association of Broadcasters is the premier advocacy association for America's broadcasters. NAB advances radio and television interests in legislative, regulatory and public affairs. Through advocacy, education and innovation, NAB enables broadcasters to best serve their communities, strengthen their businesses and seize new opportunities in the digital age. Learn more at nab.org.
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