Most local TV stations in the United States are owned by large broadcasting companies, not by the networks whose logos appear on screen. When you watch ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox in most of the country, the station holding the FCC license is usually part of a conglomerate like Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gray Media, or Tegna. The networks themselves directly own stations only in the biggest markets. Federal rules cap how much of the country any single company can reach and restrict foreign investment in broadcast licenses, but decades of consolidation have still concentrated ownership of who owns TV stations into relatively few corporate hands.
Stations the Networks Own Directly
Each major network holds FCC licenses for a small group of stations known in the industry as Owned and Operated stations, or O&Os. ABC’s O&Os belong to The Walt Disney Company. NBC’s stations sit under Comcast. Fox Corporation runs its own set. CBS stations have historically been part of Paramount Global, though that company’s pending merger with Skydance Media is shifting control to the Ellison family.
Networks concentrate direct ownership in the largest advertising markets. A station in New York or Los Angeles generates far more revenue than one in a mid-sized city, so the economics push networks toward big metros. Everywhere else, networks rely on affiliation agreements with independently owned stations that carry their programming.
The Major Station Groups
The vast majority of local stations belong to broadcasting groups that hold the licenses, run the operations, and affiliate with one or more networks for prime-time programming. These companies keep control over local news, advertising sales, and day-to-day station management while airing familiar network content.
Nexstar Media Group is the largest, reaching roughly 70% of U.S. television households through its station portfolio.1Nexstar Media Group. Nexstar Investor Deck June 2025 Sinclair Broadcast Group owns or operates about 185 stations in 85 markets.2Sinclair Broadcast Group. TV Stations Gray Media operates stations in 113 markets, collectively reaching around 37% of U.S. households.3Gray Media. Our Markets Tegna, which remained independent after a 2023 acquisition attempt fell through, rounds out the top tier.
A station can look local, with hometown anchors and community branding, while the corporate structure behind it is a multibillion-dollar enterprise headquartered somewhere else entirely. That scale lets these groups standardize technology, centralize back-office functions, and negotiate harder with cable and satellite providers. The tradeoff is fewer distinct editorial voices deciding what local audiences see.
How to Find Out Who Owns Your Local Station
The FCC maintains an online public inspection file for every broadcast licensee. You can search by call sign, network affiliation, channel number, or facility ID at the FCC’s public file portal.4Federal Communications Commission. FCC Public Inspection Files Each station’s file includes current ownership information, political advertising records, and documentation of community-interest programming.
Commercial stations also file a detailed ownership report, FCC Form 323, every two years, due by December 1 in odd-numbered years.5eCFR. 47 CFR 73.3615 – Ownership Reports These reports capture information current as of October 1 of the filing year and must be updated within 30 days whenever a license is transferred or assigned. The result is a fairly current public record of who holds every broadcast license in the country.
The 39% National Audience Cap
Federal law limits how much of the national television audience any single company can reach. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 originally set the ceiling at 35% of U.S. television households. Congress raised it to 39% in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004 and simultaneously prohibited the FCC from weakening or eliminating the cap.6Federal Communications Commission. FCC Broadcast Ownership Rules That 39% figure remains the law today.
For years a loophole called the UHF discount let companies count only half the households in markets where their station broadcast on a UHF channel, a holdover from an era when UHF signals were genuinely weaker than VHF. The FCC eliminated the UHF discount in 2016, finding that the digital television transition had erased any real signal-quality difference between UHF and VHF.7Federal Register. National Television Multiple Ownership Rule Companies that had relied on the discount to stay under the 39% cap had to account for their full household reach going forward.
When a merger would push a company past 39%, that company must divest enough stations to come back into compliance. Every major station deal now involves careful math about audience reach before anyone signs.
Local Ownership and Duopoly Limits
Separate rules govern how many stations one company can own within a single local market. Under 47 CFR § 73.3555(b), a company can own two TV stations in the same designated market area only if their coverage areas don’t overlap, or if at least one of the stations isn’t ranked in the top four by audience share.8eCFR. 47 CFR 73.3555 – Multiple Ownership The top-four restriction keeps the most-watched stations in a city from merging under one owner.
An older requirement called the eight voices test, which demanded that at least eight independently owned stations remain in a market after any combination, was eliminated by the FCC after it concluded the test lacked support in the record.9Federal Communications Commission. Review of the Commission’s Broadcast Ownership Rules Without that backstop, the top-four restriction now carries most of the weight in preventing local monopolies.
Cross-ownership rules that once stopped a single company from owning a TV station and a radio station, or a TV station and a daily newspaper, in the same market were eliminated in 2017.6Federal Communications Commission. FCC Broadcast Ownership Rules Today a single company can own TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers in the same city with no structural barrier.
Shared Services and Sidecar Arrangements
Even where duopoly rules block outright ownership of two top stations in a market, companies have built workarounds. In a time brokerage arrangement, one station pays to program most of another station’s airtime. If a company with an interest in one station brokers more than 15% of another station’s weekly broadcast time in the same market, the FCC treats that arrangement as equivalent to ownership for purposes of the local and national caps.10eCFR. 47 CFR 73.3555 – Multiple Ownership
Joint sales agreements work similarly. If one station sells more than 15% of another station’s weekly advertising time, the selling station is treated as having an ownership interest in the other. Shared services agreements, where stations share news crews, equipment, or back-office operations without crossing the 15% programming or ad-sales thresholds, generally don’t trigger attribution. These arrangements are common in smaller markets where running two fully independent newsrooms isn’t economically viable, and they can leave one company effectively controlling more of a market’s airwaves than a look at the license holders alone would suggest.
Foreign Ownership Restrictions
Federal law sharply limits foreign investment in broadcast licenses. Under 47 U.S.C. § 310(b), no broadcast license can be held by a company where more than 20% of the stock is owned or voted by foreign individuals, governments, or foreign-organized corporations.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 310 – License Ownership Restrictions For indirect ownership through a parent company, the threshold is 25%, though the FCC has discretion to allow higher foreign investment at that level if it finds doing so serves the public interest.12eCFR. 47 CFR 1.5000 – Citizenship and Filing Requirements Under Section 310(b)
Any request to exceed the 25% indirect threshold requires a petition for declaratory ruling, which triggers a national security review. A formal interagency committee, established by executive order to replace the informal process once known as Team Telecom, evaluates whether the proposed foreign investment poses risks to national security or law enforcement.13U.S. Department of Justice. The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector The committee can propose conditions to mitigate risks or recommend denial, and reviews can revisit previously approved licenses if new concerns emerge.
Why Ownership Concentration Keeps Growing
The ownership rules that remain in place are the ones actively holding consolidation back. The 39% national cap is locked in by statute and requires an act of Congress to change. The local top-four restriction and the attribution rules for brokered time and joint sales agreements are within the FCC’s authority to revise and get relitigated every few years as media companies push for looser limits and public-interest groups push to keep them. Between the eliminated cross-ownership rules, the eliminated eight voices test, and the eliminated UHF discount, the direction of change over the past decade has been toward allowing more consolidation, not less. The station groups already dominant in local broadcasting have been the main beneficiaries.