Will Brendan Carr learn why "You don't spit into the wind?"

Ever find yourself in one of those moments where you have a hard time comprehending exactly what the hell is going on? Us too.

What we are shaking our heads about on this Monday is the hypocritical behavior from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, one Brendan Carr.

Last Friday, Mr. Carr appeared before the annual CPAC convention in Grapevine, Texas, where he proudly proclaimed, “President Trump is taking on the fake media and President Trump is winning.” Carr acknowledged that the administration is “not at the point of raising the mission accomplished flag” in its apparent quest to vanquish any media outlet that might disagree with the approved narrative coming out of Washington.

Thank heavens for that bit of cognition from the FCC chairman, because we all know how well the last raising of a “mission accomplished” banner was remembered by history.

But Carr wasn’t appearing before the CPAC faithful for just a quick victory lap. In his remarks, he would go on to recite the various “accomplishments” that had been achieved in the last 15 months: “Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid, gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-Eyed Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. [Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well.”

It is worth noting that none of the “results” he cited were due to any direct action by the FCC. Rather, it’s the climate of fear and uncertainty that Carr’s FCC has brought to the electronic media that it regulates. An FCC with only three sitting commissioners, when it normally has five, and a two-Republican-to-one-democrat majority.

It isn’t just that the FCC Chair was speaking as a loyal member of the Trump administration. That’s pretty much par for the course. (Watch any congressional hearing on C-Span that features current or would-be appointees for a masterclass in not answering a direct question.) What is almost shocking to us (mostly because nothing is really too shocking at this point) is that Carr was cheerleading for allowing caps on the First Amendment.

Good to note that he approves of some caps, since he found a way to dispense with them in his review of the $6.2 billion merger of Nexstar and TEGNA.

Speaking of that deal, not long after Mr. Carr received his last round of applause from the conservative faithful in Texas, a Federal Judge in California issued a temporary restraining order against Nexstar's acquisition of the TEGNA stations. The deal that the FCC (along with the DOJ) approved just back on March 19th, which Nexstar moved to close on with lightning speed.

Judge Troy Nunley of the U.S. District Court for Eastern California wrote in his ruling: “Tegna and Nexstar for the time being must operate separately and may not share any 'competitively sensitive' information, including any information related to retransmission fee negotiations, among other restrictions.” His decision came in support of a lawsuit brought by DIRECTV which asserts that the proposed merger represents a concentration of broadcast TV “without precedent” and would “irreparably drive up consumer costs, reduce local competition, shutter local newsrooms, and increase both the frequency and duration of blackouts of key local teams and network programming,”

The judge made it clear in issuing his TRO that the court believes the merger “is presumed likely to ‌violate ⁠antitrust laws based on the combined firm market share alone.”

So much for ignoring those ownership caps, Mr. Chairman.

Carr isn’t just pleased that PBS and NPR have been defunded and that Stephen Colbert will soon be deplatformed; he is also turning his regulatory threats towards another entity — one that might have far more willingness to fight back — namely, the National Football League.

It seems that Carr believes that the NFL may be moving too many games from airing on broadcast television outlets, such as ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC, and placing them on subscription-based streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Peacock. So the FCC’s Media Bureau has issued a call for public comments on “Sports broadcasting practices and marketplace developments.”

Carr told the online publication Semafor last week that he is asking: “Does the NFL still benefit from the antitrust exemption when they’re negotiating for carriage of games not on a sponsored telecast, but on a streaming service?”

The league has benefitted from an antitrust exemption since 1961, which is part of a sports broadcasting law passed by Congress. The exemption allows the league to negotiate television deals on behalf of all its teams, but only if it adheres to certain criteria that ensure local fans can watch their hometown teams. That’s why games carried on ESPN, the NFL Network (now part of ESPN), and streaming services are also typically seen on local TV stations in the home markets of the two teams playing.

Which the league happens to make a nice bit of money on, on top of the rights fees paid by whatever national outlet is airing the game.

We would point out here that the FCC Chairman can probably get away with blatantly ignoring the law passed by Congress establishing a national cap on the number of local television stations that any one company can own. But when it comes to questioning the Congressional power on where people can watch professional football games…well, that might be “a bridge too far.”

When it comes to angering the National Football League, we’d tell Mr. Carr that we know from personal experience that, as the late Jim Croce sang, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.”

The song’s title, “You don’t mess around with Jim,” would be changed here to “You don’t mess around with Roger.” As in Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the NFL.

Brendan Carr previously told Semafor that moving sports behind paywalls undermines a mission to keep local news afloat. Interestingly enough, he used that same “mission” as a primary justification for granting the waiver that allowed the Nexstar-TEGNA transaction to proceed.

For its part, Nexstar placed TEGNA into a subsidiary, perhaps just in case a speed bump like a federal judge might come along and slow things down in creating all the cost savings in those projected “corporate synergy” numbers. Viewers of local TV stations previously owned by TEGNA are already seeing the Nexstar name and logo at the end of every local newscast.

Much like every NFL game on TV ends with the animated message that “thanks you for watching this presentation of the National Football League.”

And so we wonder if Mr. Carr is about to find out, as Mr. Croce’s 1972 song also warned: “You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger”?

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