Tom Wheeler

speaker

304 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 7 Feb

Tom Wheeler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The MeidasTouch Podcast · Former FCC Commissioner Wheeler on Trump Attacking Media · 5 Oct 2025 podcast

control what people hear by controlling what the broadcasters say.

And what you saw in the Jimmy Kimmel exercise was one manifestation of it.

But what's coming next is a further example.

You know, an autocrat's favorite tool is a monopoly on telling the story.

And if you can control the people who tell that story, then you've got an autocrat's greatest dream.

And so what is now going on at the FCC is an effort to change the rules about who can own the right to use the public's airwaves

to broadcast to Americans.

Go back to the beginning of broadcasting, the 1934 Communications Act, in which the founding principle was a diversity of voices and diversity of ownership so that the

debate that is so essential to democracy could take place.

Over time, that has been whittled down to the point where only about 20% of America's local, quote unquote, broadcast outlets are truly locally owned.

And what Chairman Carr announced on Tuesday of this week

the last day of September was an initiative to change the rules to allow number one, a handful of broadcasters to have a greater reach nationally.

And number two, in that process to allow them to have greater control locally.

So I'll give you a quick example.

There is a merger that has already taken place, already been agreed to, between Nexstar Media, which is the largest chain of broadcast outlets in the nation, and another chain by the name of Tenga, which is per se illegal today,

because it violates the FCC's rules in terms of both reach and local ownership.

Yet the deal went through, or the deal has been agreed to, and is only awaiting the FCC to change the rules to make it legal.

And Brendan Carr has indicated an intention to do that.

And how do you make it legal?

Well, you cut back on the diversity of voices and you cut back on the diversity of ownership and you give it to corporations that have self-identified as being Trump friendly.

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