NorthEast Radio Watch 3/17/2025: Delete, Delete, Delete

In this week’s issue… FCC seeks rule changes – Townsquare, Cumulus close struggling stations – WIRY shuts down – Cumulus spawns “Cat Country” – Toronto’s Citytv moves – Remembering Bob Rivers

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*A little over a month ago, we shook things up in this space with a rare-for-us editorial in which we warned about all the ways that our industry could be affected by the radical attempts by the new administration in Washington to remake the federal government and the economy.

For most of the time since then, the FCC has been largely under the radar while other agencies with higher profiles have felt the effects of the so-called DOGE and its sudden job cuts.

This past week, however, was different, in ways both obvious and not.

The most obvious came from FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who unleashed a public notice with the snarky title “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete,” opening a comment period starting April 11 for the public and stakeholders to identify FCC rules that should be changed or eliminated “for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens.”

“The FCC is committed to ending all of the rules and regulations that are no longer necessary,” Carr said in the announcement of the initiative. “And we welcome the public’s participation and
feedback throughout this process.”

If that sounds like a lot to accomplish in just a few weeks, it is. We expect the comment period to bring out a lot of suggestions that previous commissions would have rejected out of hand as ridiculous – but as we said in last month’s column, we also simply don’t know how far Carr really wants to go, especially with broadcast rules. In the fine print of the public notice, Carr leans heavily on the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to reverse the long-held Chevron doctrine that formerly held that courts should defer to agencies like the FCC when it comes to interpretations of ambiguous regulations. That’s a big change whose effects are only starting to be seen.

While Carr’s attention at the FCC has been largely on the regulation of newer digital media, the “Delete, Delete, Delete” agenda doesn’t exclude broadcasting. Could this proceeding open a door to ending ownership caps, for instance? That’s been one area where Carr has been vocal about deregulation. Could it eliminate things like power limits on various FM station classes, or turn LPFM stations commercial? That’s far less likely – as our colleague Michi Bradley notes on her REC Networks blog, there are actual codified laws and international treaties that, in normal times, can’t just be waved away by an activist FCC chair (especially one with a 2-2 tie on the FCC until a fifth commissioner is confirmed.)

But again, these are not normal times, and, it must be noted, this is not an administration that seems especially interested in obeying international treaties and codified laws it doesn’t like.

That, in turn, seems likely to lead to a lot of the instability we warned about last month. We’re seeing the effects already in the national and world economies, as you’ll read later in the column about Townsquare and Cumulus continuing to shut down their lower-performing, money-losing stations. (The threat of a total government shutdown, narrowly avoided, also can’t be ignored here, nor can the impulsive tariff announcements that are creating all sorts of headaches for everyone, including broadcast equipment vendors, who’s become accustomed to operating in a worldwide economy dependent on offshore manufacturing.)

We saw it to some extent last week when many of the FCC’s computer systems went down for most of two business days, making it impossible for those of us who depend on those systems to do the usual research and filing that those systems enable. Was it directly related to budget and staffing cutbacks, or just the result of ongoing instability in those systems, especially the LMS system that now handles all broadcasting records? We don’t know, in part because this FCC has been far less than transparent about what happened and why.

On an international level, we’re still trying to understand the abrupt lockout of more than a thousand staffers at Voice of America and its sister broadcasters, effectively turning off the service. While there were certainly arguments to be made about whether VOA, Radio Marti, Radio Liberty and the other international services were still effective in the 21st century, the decision to simply fire everyone involved is likely one of many sudden actions by this administration that will face court challenges over the next few years.

And that’s likely the fate of a lot of whatever it is that comes out of “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete”: an industry that depends on being able to follow predictable regulations that remain relatively stable over time will become even more unstable the more those regulations get changed, eliminated, challenged in court, perhaps reinstated, or perhaps not. It’s a radical change from the environment we’ve all become used to, and it’s hard to see how an already fragile broadcasting industry improves as a result.

We’ll continue to be watching all of this closely, especially as the broadcast industry gathers in a few weeks at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, where there’s traditionally been a robust international presence.