Concentrated power has always been the enemy of freedom. Our Founders understood this truth as a matter of first principles; that’s why they divided authority among three coequal branches. Ronald Reagan applied the same logic to the media marketplace when his administration created limits on how large of a national audience any single broadcaster could reach. He recognized that when one entity controls too much of the information pipeline, the public’s ability to hear diverse viewpoints is the first casualty.
Alarmingly, these Reagan-era protections are now under direct assault.
Nexstar Media Group, the country’s largest owner of local TV stations, wants regulators in Washington to bless a takeover of TEGNA, another massive station group. The merged company would own more than 260 stations across the country, piping “local” newscasts into over 80 percent of American homes—more than double the limit Congress wrote into law. That is not “competition.” It’s domination. And it would transform our system of local news into something far more nationalized, homogenized, and easily influenced by ideological agendas.
Fortunately, President Donald Trump has once again shown that he understands the stakes. His recent Truth Social post warning against lifting or waiving the ownership cap was exactly right. Trump’s concern wasn’t merely about Nexstar; it was about the precedent. If the FCC blows apart these decades-old limits, every major network will race to exploit the opening. Once the guardrails fall, no regulator will be able to keep the others from following the same path.
And now we have proof. The Capitol Forum recently reported that Fox is exploring a deal that would give it operational control over CBS’s owned-and-operated stations nationwide. In other words, the major networks aren’t waiting for permission—they’re positioning themselves for a regulatory free-for-all. Conservatives may not mind the idea of Fox getting bigger, but it is fantasy to believe that Washington can fling the door open for a few companies and then somehow keep it shut for their peers and competitors. Courts won’t permit that kind of selective enforcement. Nor should conservatives want them to. That sort of arbitrary, winner-picking policy is exactly the Administrative State overreach we’ve spent decades fighting to dismantle.
This is why Reagan’s FCC put these limits in place—and why Congress later codified them in statute, placing them beyond the FCC’s authority to change. The purpose was to preserve a decentralized, community-rooted news system in which local stations remained accountable to local viewers, not national executives in far-off corporate towers. Once local news becomes a national commodity controlled by a handful of mega-groups, the range of viewpoints shrinks dramatically, and the power to shape public opinion becomes dangerously concentrated.
Nexstar’s record only sharpens those concerns. This is the company that launched NewsNation as a supposedly “neutral” cable alternative, only to build its lineup around anti-Trump voices like Chris Cuomo. Nearly 80 percent of Nexstar employees’ political donations in the 2024 presidential race went to Kamala Harris. And now they are asking a Trump-appointed FCC to let them centralize control of the nation’s local newsrooms? No, thank you.
Beyond bad policy and bad principle, this mega-merger would also be bad politics. Voters just sent a painful message in last month’s elections: they are tired of rising prices and will punish any party that adds to their monthly costs. Yet retransmission fees—the charges TV station owners demand from cable and satellite providers for carrying their signals—have risen more than 2,000 percent over 15 years. When broadcasters merge and gain leverage, those fees go up. And when those fees go up, consumers’ bills go up. Approving mega-mergers that supercharge this trend—and give Democrats a ready-made campaign ad in the process—is political malpractice.
If conservatives want a media landscape that respects free markets, free speech, and the diversity of local voices that make America strong, then this is the line to hold. President Trump is right. Reagan was right.
The FCC and DOJ should reject the Nexstar–TEGNA merger and preserve the principle that no single TV station owner—no matter how large, friendly, or familiar—should dominate the flow of local news in America.
George Landrith is the President of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and the author of “Let Freedom Ring… Again: Can Self-Evident Truths Save America from Further Decline?”