FCC competition review opens as broadcasters make case for ownership relief

The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice requesting data, comment and analysis from industry stakeholders to inform its 2026 Communications Marketplace Report to Congress.

The biennial report, required under the RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018, assesses the state of competition across voice, video, audio and data services. The FCC’s Office of Economics and Analytics is collecting input on fixed broadband, mobile wireless, satellite communications, voice, video, audio and international broadband markets.

The proceeding arrives at a moment of transition for the broadcast industry.

In past filings with the FCC, broadcast groups have urged the agency to eliminate caps on station ownership and roll back regulations they argue have put them at a structural disadvantage against technology companies and streaming platforms that face no comparable restrictions on scale.

The FCC has not revised its broadcast ownership rules in decades, but the legal and regulatory ground has shifted since the commission adopted its last marketplace report in December 2024. Court decisions have struck down the prohibition on owning two top-four-rated stations in a single market. Separately, the FCC recently waived its national ownership cap to approve the Nexstar acquisition of Tegna, though that approval is now being challenged in federal court.

The data and arguments filed in this docket will form the evidentiary record Congress and the commission use to evaluate competition, a record that broadcasters and their opponents will cite in ongoing disputes over whether ownership rules still reflect the market as it exists today.

Comments are due May 21, 2026, with reply comments due June 22.

The notice outlined a revised analytical framework for evaluating the video marketplace. The FCC said it plans to group video service providers into three categories: broadcast television stations, multichannel video providers and internet-based on-demand video providers.

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The multichannel video provider category would now include traditional multichannel video programming distributors, virtual MVPDs and free ad-supported streaming television services such as Pluto TV and Tubi. Previous reports used the broader term “online video distributors” to describe all providers delivering programming over the internet. The FCC said it made the change because MVPDs, vMVPDs and FAST services all offer a multichannel video product.

The agency is seeking data on pricing, subscription trends, vertical integration of programming ownership, the deployment of ATSC 3.0 service and the fragmentation of live sports programming across providers.

The FCC also proposed eliminating its reporting on set-top boxes used to access MVPD programming. The agency said its reports since 2020 have documented a decline in consumer rental of set-top boxes, increased use of apps to watch programming on other devices and greater availability of video services that do not require a set-top box.

The FCC said it “tentatively conclude[s] that there is no longer a need to report on whether further FCC regulation is necessary to ensure the competitive availability of devices to access MVPD programming” and sought comment on that conclusion.

The FCC said it plans to use the same analytical framework for audio as in its 2024 report, dividing the market into terrestrial broadcast radio, satellite radio and online audio providers. The agency requested data on service offerings, pricing, ratings, subscribership and revenue.

Comments can be filed electronically through the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System under GN Docket No. 26-78.

Why it matters

The Communications Marketplace Report is the evidentiary foundation Congress uses to evaluate whether the rules governing broadcasters, cable operators, wireless carriers and tech platforms still match the competitive reality. For broadcasters, this filing cycle may be the most consequential in years.

Broadcast groups have spent the better part of a decade arguing that ownership caps designed for a three-network era are now handicapping them against streaming services and technology companies that can acquire audiences and content at a scale no broadcaster is permitted to match.

The data filed in this docket will shape how the FCC describes the competitive landscape in its report to Congress, and that description will either support or undermine the case for further deregulation. Broadcasters who want the commission to document how streaming platforms and tech companies have reshaped the market need to bring the numbers.

Opponents who argue that local media consolidation reduces competition and programming diversity need to do the same.

The revised video framework matters here too. By placing vMVPDs and FAST services in the same competitive category as traditional cable and satellite distributors, the FCC is drawing a picture of a video market with more competitors than earlier reports suggested. That framing could cut both ways: it supports the argument that consumers have more choices than ever, but it also raises the question of whether broadcasters need more scale to compete in a market with that many players.

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