When I was a kid, my dad ran a small local business. Like countless owners, he depended on local broadcast media to reach customers, build trust in the community and keep the lights on to support our family.
That connection between local media and local livelihoods left a lasting impression on me and pulled me into this industry. My career has been an evolution of the family business.
Over the past two decades, I’ve watched the local broadcast industry move through cycles of dominance, disruption and struggle. Twenty years ago, broadcast TV commanded the majority of viewing time and ad dollars. According to BIA Advisory Services, it accounts for roughly 10% of the $182 billion dollar local advertiser wallet share predicted for 2026, with Big Tech and streaming walled gardens absorbing the bulk of local consumer attention and data.
Local media operators have reached an inflection point. Even as viewership of traditional linear TV declines, broadcasters remain the heartbeat of their communities. But they’re being asked to compete in a marketplace designed for global digital giants while operating under ownership rules written when they were the only media in the market.
Without the scale afforded to other digital content companies, they are at a competitive disadvantage. If local media is going to thrive into the future, legislators must move beyond outdated protections and empower operators to evolve into modern media businesses that better serve local advertisers and their communities.
Scale sells
While regulators scrutinize consolidation in local broadcast, the rest of the media ecosystem is consolidating in plain sight, including streaming, Big Tech and ad tech.
So let’s allow local broadcasters to compete on a level playing field.
When I started Premion in 2016, the premise was to bring a fragmented group of streaming and CTV platforms to local advertisers. At the time, there were many providers, including Discovery, A&E, AMC, Paramount, Hulu, ESPN, Roku, Tubi and Pluto.
But then the streamers consolidated and began to benefit from scale, freely merging and partnering to amass control over content, data and ad economics. This trend has accelerated to the point where streamers are now merging with major national broadcasters – see, for example, Netflix’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Meanwhile, Amazon (owner of Prime Video, Freevee and MGM), Google (owner of YouTube) and Meta (Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook) continue pushing deeper into local markets, armed with scale, first-party data and balance sheets local broadcasters can’t match. Today, YouTube alone commands nearly 13% of total TV viewership.
These companies are building vertically integrated ecosystems that connect content, commerce, identity and ads, while local broadcasters are left fragmented, capital-constrained and structurally limited.
The case for consolidation
Opponents of consolidation frequently point to the national broadcast ownership cap, a statute established by Congress in 2004 that limits a single entity from owning enough TV stations to reach 39% of US households.
Lawmakers have urged the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block any deals that exceed the cap, calling it “presumptively illegal” for a merger to allow a broadcaster to reach roughly 80% of US households.
But the logic behind that pushback doesn’t hold up. Consolidation at the national and market levels can still result in competitive dynamics.
We allow national streaming platforms and technology companies to consolidate freely, expanding buying power, controlling pricing and crowding out small and midsize competitors and advertisers. According to Nielsen, Netflix reaches nearly 70% of US households.
Yet local broadcasters are denied the very scale required to innovate and compete. That’s not a level playing field; it’s a structural disadvantage baked into regulation.
When local broadcasters lose relevance and buying power, small and midsize businesses lose their most trusted and effective channel for reaching nearby customers. Communities lose access to local news and content.
Consolidation enables investment in innovation. To replace declining linear revenue streams and evolve their businesses around digital, CTV and performance-driven advertising, broadcasters require capital only gained through scale. Scale makes it possible to invest in the lifeblood of their business: building high-quality local content and recruiting, training and retaining the teams required to build and monetize that content at scale.
Instead of expending precious capital and human resources on building disparate, subscale technology, broadcasters are rallying behind common platforms, using their collective scale to partner with the right technology to power the next evolution of local media.
The TVB’s linear trading platform initiative is an excellent example. It brings broadcasters together around shared standards, making linear TV easier for advertisers to transact programmatically. Those efforts free up capital to invest in local content, supporting small businesses and fostering local advertising.
And consolidation enables precision without sacrificing trust. A tech-forward local ecosystem can deliver modern targeting and measurement while preserving the credibility, accountability and community connection that local stations uniquely provide.
The rules have to change
Local media isn’t asking for a handout. It just needs permission to use the same tools as streaming and digital giants.
If we want a future where local journalism, local businesses and local communities thrive, broadcasters must be allowed to merge, modernize and compete at scale. Blocking consolidation while tech giants consolidate only distorts the very competition such restrictions are designed to protect.
Local media is a foundational pillar of the digital economy and deserves to be treated as such by regulators and advertisers alike.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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