Carr’s FCC moves against Big Tech dominance to restore local media competition

OPINION:

The Federal Communications Commission, under Chairman Brendan Carr, is racking up wins for the American people, whether the liberal media cartel acknowledges them or not. Mr. Carr enforces the law, drags outdated regulations into the modern era and takes the fight straight to Silicon Valley’s information cartel.

Now the fight moves to a simple question: Who controls what Americans watch, read and believe? Local broadcasters rooted in our communities, or unaccountable Big Tech monopolies that dictate the narrative from Silicon Valley boardrooms?

For decades, Washington kneecapped local broadcasters with outdated ownership caps while it gave Big Tech free rein to scale without limits. The result was predictable. Local stations lost scale, leverage and revenue. Silicon Valley tightened its grip on the national conversation, deciding which stories get told and which get buried.

Local stations cannot compete if the government forces them to stay small. That is not an accident. That is a policy choice.

Mr. Carr saw this coming years ago. He has pushed relentlessly to modernize ownership rules so hometown stations do not get steamrolled by trillion-dollar platforms that operate at a national and global scale. His agenda is straightforward: Break the chokehold of media gatekeepers and rebuild a competitive, local-first news ecosystem.

The FCC’s recent merger approval marks an important step, but it is only a start. Broadcasters across America still operate under ownership caps written in the 1990s, before smartphones, before streaming, before social media. Federal regulation locks in this structural disadvantage.

Big Tech oligarchs such as Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple face no comparable limits. They vacuum up eyeballs, dominate digital advertising and shape the national narrative. Local broadcasters fight with one hand tied behind their backs while Silicon Valley consolidates power.

That imbalance has consequences.

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Last year alone, Big Tech pulled in more than $150 billion in streaming revenue. At the same time, these platforms siphon nearly $2 billion each year out of local newsrooms. That money leaves American communities and flows straight to Silicon Valley. Every dollar lost means fewer reporters, fewer investigations and less accountability at the local level.

Working-class families pay the price. They are pushed out of the media ecosystem, shut out of the conversation and treated as if they do not exist.

If Washington wants real competition, it must update ownership rules so hometown stations can scale, invest and compete head-to-head with Big Tech and Big Media.

Lift the ownership cap. Level the playing field. Let local broadcasters fight.

Live sports are another front in this battle, and Americans feel it every weekend.

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Big Tech streaming giants are locking major sporting events, including playoff games and national matchups, behind expensive and fragmented paywalls. They are turning shared national experiences into gated content for people who can afford multiple subscriptions. They took something that belonged to everyone and started selling it back piece by piece. If you cannot pay, then you do not watch.

Working families are getting priced out of their own culture. They are getting priced out of the games they grew up watching. They are getting priced out of the shared experiences that once brought this country together.

Local stations built the foundation for how Americans experience live sports. They made these events accessible, communal and free to watch. When Big Tech takes over sports distribution, it strips local affiliates of critical revenue streams that sustain their news operations.

When that revenue disappears, local journalism disappears with it.

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Stations without scale do not invest in reporting. They cut it. Newsrooms shrink. Original reporting gets replaced with wire copy and national feeds. Local voices fade. Communities lose the watchdogs that hold power accountable.

Working-class Americans get hit first, and they get hit hardest. Washington ignores them, and now the media system shuts them out.

Economies of scale make local journalism possible.

President Trump recognized this problem early. His media strategy aims to dismantle entrenched gatekeepers and restore competition by empowering alternative voices. Mr. Carr carries this mission forward. He cuts through bureaucratic inertia and takes on the regulatory framework that protects Big Tech’s dominance.

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This is the media counterrevolution in action.

Break the monopolies. Tear down outdated rules. Restore fairness to a system that Washington tilted for decades. Stop letting Silicon Valley decide who gets heard and who gets erased.

If local journalism is going to survive, and if it is going to matter, then Washington must stop protecting the imbalance. Local broadcasters need the same freedom to scale that Big Tech already enjoys. They need the ability to invest, grow and compete without artificial limits imposed by regulators stuck in the analog era.

The path forward is simple. Update ownership rules to allow hometown stations to compete. Prevent Big Tech from taking over live sports. Stop pretending that regulations written before the internet serve the American people today.

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Anything less is surrender.

• Mike Davis is the founder and president of Article III Project.