Connoisseur Media had the biggest transaction in the U.S. radio industry in 2025.
If the company has its way, the rules that restrict how many stations an entity can own a single broadcast market will no longer stand it in its way for further expansion.
Seven companies in all — Connoisseur, Townsquare Media, Mid-West Family Broadcasting, Midwest Communications, Bonneville International, Frandsen Family Stations and Legend Communications — filed jointly in favor of removing the local radio ownership rule, as part of the commission’s 2022 Quadrennial Review.
At present, in each of the largest radio markets, a licensee can own up to eight commercial radio stations, but a subcap limits a licensee to owning no more than five on each band (FM/AM) in the market. The cap shrinks as market size decreases.
Echoing sentiments expressed by the National Association of Broadcasters in its own comments, the radio groups assert that the media landscape is vastly different than in 1996.
(Read the joint comments filed by Connoisseur Media et. al.)
“While radio stations have made valiant efforts to capture their share of digital advertising revenues, they face an uphill battle against the goliaths of the tech industry,” the groups wrote.
The companies believe that deregulation is the key to reviving revenue in radio, which would in turn inspire advertiser investment, and then give stations the ability to maintain the infrastructure to provide local news and information.
Much of their arguments centered on declining current ad dollars and listener numbers. They cited surveys performed by Edison Research, Borrell Associates and BIA Advisory Services.
On average, individual radio stations receive less than 1% of total local advertising share this year, the groups said, citing data prepared by Borrell for the filing.
“Fighting to achieve a 1% share is not a means to local radio’s survival,” the groups wrote.
“To support robust local services, radio cannot exist on that less than 1%.”
Invisible lines
At its core, the companies argued that allowing radio groups to own more stations in their markets is essential for competing with Big Tech.
The groups provided written declarations from staff members in support of their argument.
Kristin Okesson, the regional senior vice president and market manager for Connoisseur Media’s Connecticut stations, wrote that with existing subcaps, it is difficult for those seeking buys to keep track of stations.
“Due to invisible lines created by overlapping ownership of broadcast stations even in markets with modest population bases,” Okkesson said, “advertisers must work with the systems used by each broadcast owner in the market, requiring the advertiser to deal with multiple sales reps, pay multiple invoices and try and interpret multiple rates cards and other sales jargon that comes from each owner.”
Trying to squeeze as much out of the signals a company has in a given market, Kent Frandsen, the president of Frandsen Family Stations wrote, results in a mass-appeal approach.
“Today, the limitations of ownership have forced us to focus on formats with wider potential audiences to optimize the stations we have,” Frandsen said.
The companies feel that a broadcaster with more local ownership would have an incentive to program more broadly, as opposed to the current state of “fighting in the same formats with other local broadcasters.”
Larry Patrick, the managing director of Legend Communications, wrote that the caps prevent potential bail-outs of “zombie stations.”
“When that in-market competitor is limited in bringing fresh capital and stability to struggling stations, he or she is often prevented from purchasing the stations from another owner,” Patrick said.
That can also prevent further investment in a group’s own properties, the companies argued.
Michael Paterson, the president of Mid-West Family Broadcasting, said that with relaxed ownership rules, the company would be able to invest “in at least two more staff positions” in the next year.
But without a change in the rules, the company will be “handcuffed” to find even a contract-based employee in the next two years, as it seeks “to expand the footprint as we work to manage revenue and expenses in a challenged marketplace.”
Okkesson wrote that with Connoisseur’s existing scale in Fairfield and New Haven Counties in Connecticut, it allows the company to “provide a level of public service and community programming” that smaller companies would not be able to sustain.
The marketplace at hand
When the FCC decided to keep radio ownership caps as-is following the 2018 Quadrennial Review, part of the commission’s logic, the groups asserted, was its view of the radio listening market as a separate marketplace.
The commission saw radio as a separate segment of the audio marketplace, with digital offerings “more likely a substitute for people playing their own ‘owned music’ rather than for radio,” the groups wrote.
That ran contrary to NAB’s assertion that the relevant competition to radio, as of the 2018 review, was “the public’s attention and time.”
By insisting in its review order that radio remains a unique marketplace, the commission “ducked the competition analysis” that Section 202 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires, the companies argued.
“If radio continues to be defined as a unique market, the commission could leave the ownership restrictions on radio in place forever to make sure that no radio company dominated the ‘radio market,’ even as radio faded into obscurity,” the groups wrote.
Free only goes so far
Like NAB, the groups said that the FCC can also no longer distinguish radio broadcasting from other audio platforms because it is a free service. The groups cited Edison Research data that showed that of the 66% of Americans using streaming audio, they do so on platforms with paid subscriptions.
Americans are more than willing to get news about their backyard online, the companies said. The filing cited a Pew Research study from last year that said that 48% of Americans get their local news from the internet and social media, as opposed to 9% who get their news from local radio stations.
Local high school sports games, once a mainstay, the groups said, are now increasingly being offered online through subscription-based services. It’s more evidence that radio and digital are competitors, and not “somehow segregated” into separate markets, the companies wrote.
Dollars and cents
The shift from traditional to digital ad-spending is nothing new, the companies said. It’s been on a “meteoric rise” for years.
But it’s also past the point of admitting that radio and digital are in a fierce competition for ad dollars — a competition that the groups said that digital is running away with.
Digital media’s share of all local advertising has grown from 26% nine years ago to 70% in 2024, according to Borrell in data cited by the companies. In 2025, no locally-based broadcast or print media entity controls more than a 3% share of local advertising, according to Borrell, which is down from 6% in 2023.
The current FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr, the groups said, must view the marketplace differently than the commission did during the 2018 review, which the groups said saw digital and radio ad spending as “complements” of each other.
The problem is further exacerbated, the groups said, with three out-of-market tech companies in Amazon Advertising, Google and Meta controlling 58% of the local advertising market this year, according to Borrell.
Competition for ears
Just like for ad dollars, the groups assert that radio competes directly with digital platforms for their ears and loyalty.
They argued that the commission, in 2018, tried to downplay the competition, and it suffered from citing sources that tried to “spin” Edison Research’s listening data.
For the purposes of their filing, the companies said they are using direct data from Edison’s 2025 Share of Ear.
In 2014, in a typical day, an average listener listened to 130 minutes of over-the-air radio, with streaming services garnering only 55 minutes per day of listening. This year, those numbers have reversed, with streaming garnering twice the listening minutes as over-the-air radio, according to Edison Research.
Among Americans ages 13-24, the average daily time spent listening to broadcast radio decreased by approximately 58% from 85 minutes per day in 2014, to approximately 35 minutes per day in 2025, according to Edison.
The average daily time spent listening to audio streaming sources increased by approximately 62% from 112 minutes per day in 2014, to 182 minutes per day, according to Edison.
A change, regardless
The companies seek elimination of the local ownership rule.
However, if the commission refuses, they ask that the current tiers be modified significantly. In San Francisco, for example, the caps should allow ownership of “more than 20 stations,” the companies said, rather than being restricted to the eight stations currently permitted.
“The time is now for the commission to finally act to allow broadcasters to build strong local brands that can compete against the tech giants,” the groups concluded.
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