• Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the FCC, says he'll be scrutinizing broadcast TV companies, like CBS and NBC.
• What does that mean? Carr is vague.
• That vagueness may be the point: It could cause broadcast TV companies to think twice before running something Carr, or Trump, doesn't like.

The next Trump administration says it wants to get rid of regulations.

But not all regulations.

Brendan Carr, Trump's choice to head the Federal Communications Commission, says he plans to scrutinize broadcast TV operators to see if they are operating in "the public interest" — a requirement tied to the 1934 Communications Act. If they're not, he says, they could lose their license to use the public airwaves.

What exactly does that mean? Carr isn't super-specific. And Carr, who already is an FCC commissioner, didn't mention the issue when he wrote about the FCC for Project 2025, a conservative planning document Trump allies are using to help staff the next administration. But he has been talking about it quite a bit over the last few weeks.

Shortly after Trump nominated Carr to lead the FCC, Carr announced that the agency would "enforce this public interest obligation." He brought the idea up again in a Fox News interview shortly after. On Friday, he talked about it again, via a CNBC interview.

"Look, the law is very clear. The Communications Act says you have to operate in the public interest," he said. "And if you don't, yes, one of the consequences is potentially losing your license. And of course, that's on the table. I mean, look, broadcast licenses are not sacred cows."

Asked to clarify if he meant he was going to target broadcasters he thought were too liberal, Carr said that wasn't the case, and that he wasn't trying to rein in speech.

"At the end of the day, obviously there's a statutory provision that prevents the FCC from engaging in censorship. I don't want to be the speech police. But there is something that's different about broadcasters than, say, podcasters, where you have to operate in a public interest."

Then Carr argued that all he plans on doing is enforcing existing regulations.

"I'm just saying follow the law. I mean, this law has been on the books for a long time," he said. "It's not my decision to hold broadcasters to a public interest obligation. It's Congress. And if they don't like that, then they should go to Congress to change the law."

(It's worth noting the act applies only to companies with over-the-air broadcast operations, like CBS and NBC. But all four of the big broadcast networks are part of larger media outfits. In the case of CBS and NBC, that's Paramount and Comcast, respectively.)

You can see the whole thing here:

I've asked Carr and his office for comment and clarification about where he thinks broadcasters may have acted against the public interest.

But in the meantime, it's worth noting that he's already argued that CBS deserves scrutiny over the way its "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris — which is also the center of a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS last month. And that Carr also complained about Harris making an appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" the weekend before the election.

Perhaps Carr has also criticized the way broadcasters have treated Harris or other Democrats. But I haven't seen or heard it.

All of which suggests that Carr may try using the power of his agency to affect the way broadcasters treat Trump and his allies. Even if he says that's not the case.

But none of this is super clear-cut. For instance: Carr has talked about bringing up Trump's "60 Minutes" complaint when Larry and David Ellison, who are trying to buy CBS owner Paramount, need approval to transfer the CBS broadcast license. But it's hard to imagine a Carr-led FCC actually holding up the Paramount deal, given that Larry Ellison is both a Trump supporter and good pals with Elon Musk, a Carr ally.

And it's also worth noting that Carr also has carrots available to help get broadcasters on board, in addition to sticks. Most notably: Lots of media owners are hoping that the next Trump administration will make it easier for them to consolidate, and Carr has repeatedly said he's in favor of that. So this could easily get muddy.

But all of it has the potential to cause media companies to think twice, or a third time, before airing something they think Donald Trump has a problem with. Is that what Brendan Carr wants?

Jessica Rosenworcel, the first woman to serve as permanent chair on the FCC, said Wednesday that she’ll step down from the agency when Donald Trump assumes the presidency. Rosenworcel joined the FCC in 2012, and was behind a number of efforts to transform the agency charged with regulating the U.S. telecommunications industry. She pushed for […]

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• Cable networks used to be incredibly valuable. But in the streaming and cord-cutting era, they're in decline.
• That's why Comcast is ditching almost all its cable networks into a new stand-alone company.
• It would like to persuade other cable-TV owners to join in.

One of the country's biggest cable TV companies doesn't want its cable networks anymore. Would you like them?

That's the pitch Comcast is making Wednesday as it announces plans to split off almost all its cable TV networks into a new company. It's the same pitch Comcast floated as a possibility back in October, and most of the details are the same.

Comcast is set to spin off a new publicly traded company, owned by its existing shareholders. Into the spinco goes every cable network Comcast owns except for Bravo. That means networks like CNBC, MSNBC, USA, along with a few digital assets, including its Fandango movie-ticket service.

It plans to hang on to the rest of its media business, including its NBC broadcast network, Peacock streaming service, Universal film and TV studio, and Universal theme-parks business. And Bravo. (Can't wait for someone smart to explain why Comcast is so attached to Bravo. Maybe it's as simple as "Real Housewives"?)

For the record: Comcast says it thinks the cable networks it is ditching can be successful on their own. The new company "will be ideally positioned for success and highly attractive to investors, content creators, distributors and potential partners," CEO Brian Roberts said in a statement. That "partners" reference is important — Comcast has also floated the idea of folding in other companies' cable networks into the spinoff, which would theoretically give it more heft and negotiating power with advertisers and pay-TV distributors.

But in the end, this is essentially a garage sale: Maybe someone else will want this stuff. But if Comcast wanted it, it wouldn't be getting rid of it.

And as I said last month: Comcast is getting rid of its basic-cable networks for the same reason everyone who owns basic-cable networks would like to get rid of their cable networks. They have limited business prospects because the number of people paying for and watching cable networks is falling every year, and there's no end in sight. Public investors want nothing to do with them.

That's why Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery took a combined $15 billion write-off earlier this year (and why Disney took one as well, though it was much smaller). They were belatedly telling investors they were less valuable than they used to be.

But while Comcast's peers have thought about getting rid of some or all of their cable holdings, they haven't done it. In part because it's hard to imagine who a buyer would be. And in part because even though they're declining, cable TV networks still generate a lot of cash, and their parent companies have been reluctant to part with that.

Now that Comcast is doing it, will others follow? One indicator may be the way Wall Street reacts to Wednesday's news: Comcast shares, which have been in the doldrums for a year, perked up a bit in advance of the announcement.

One other thought: Comcast doesn't expect this deal to trip any regulatory triggers, because it isn't a consolidation — it's just splitting one company into two. It also doesn't involve the transfer of a broadcast-network license, which would require a sign-off from the Federal Communications Commission.

On the other hand: During his latest presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly threatened media companies over their news coverage, and has even sued CBS over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. And Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to chair the FCC, has been echoing Trump's complaints about TV news: "The status quo, particularly when it comes to legacy media, needs to change," he told Fox News this week. So I wouldn't rule out the notion of government weighing in on this one before it's over.

The Federal Communications Commission's plan to investigate and potentially regulate data caps is all but dead now, after President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that he will promote Commissioner Brendan Carr to the chairmanship role.

The FCC last month voted 3–2 to open a formal inquiry into how broadband data caps affect consumers and whether the commission has authority to regulate how Internet service providers impose such caps. The proceeding is continuing for now, as the FCC comment and reply comment deadlines are November 14 and December 2. You can view the docket here.

Broadband industry lobby groups knew they would face no possibility of data-cap regulation once Trump won the election. But they submitted their comments late last week, making the case that data caps are good for customers and that the FCC has no authority to regulate them—the same arguments that Carr made when he dissented from the vote to open an inquiry.

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