Americans are looking for a media landscape that reflects the full diversity of our communities. That includes varied political viewpoints, local journalism, cultural programming and faith-based voices that serve audiences often overlooked by national media.
Yet one of the most significant barriers to that goal remains an outdated federal policy: the national television ownership cap.
In an ex parte filing submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Trinity Broadcasting Network made a compelling case for why this arbitrary limit no longer serves the public interest, stifling the voices of religious broadcasters like themselves.
“For more than 50 years, Trinity has owned and operated stations that deliver faith-based programming free of charge to viewers in each of its licensed local communities,” writes Trinity Broadcasting President Michael W. Crouch. “Trinity competes directly with streaming services, digital platform, and multinational technology companies—many of which control access to audiences through opaque algorithms, subscription fees or content moderation policies.”
The national ownership cap was imposed on broadcast television before the internet existed and before local stations were competing with global streaming behemoths for viewers and advertising.
Today, broadcasters compete against national cable networks, global streaming platforms, social media companies and multinational technology firms that face no limits on national reach. Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and TikTok can serve 100% of American households, shape audience behavior through algorithms and monetize attention at unprecedented scale. Local broadcasters, by contrast, remain constrained by a rule that limits their reach to just 39% of U.S. television households.
This imbalance undermines competition and silences diverse voices.
“For Christian broadcasters, free, over-the-air television remains one of the few distribution platforms where religious expression can reach audiences without gatekeepers, paywalls, or platform bias,” Crouch continues. “Policies that weaken broadcast television therefore weaken religious expression itself.”
The national ownership cap does exactly that. By limiting broadcasters’ ability to achieve scale, it restricts access to capital, reduces investment in content and makes it harder for mission-driven networks to sustain free service in a hyper-competitive marketplace.
The FCC has both the authority and the responsibility to modernize its ownership rules. As Trinity Broadcasting Network’s filing makes clear, the national cap no longer reflects marketplace realities and actively undermines core public interest goals.
If policymakers truly want to preserve varied voices in American media, including religious broadcasters, they must stop treating scale as the enemy of diversity. In today’s media environment, scale is often the very thing that makes diversity possible.
Act now to ask policymakers to ensure your access to free, local broadcasting.
