Grab your remotes, and get ready to change the channels; there’s a new struggle against increased media consolidation, and chances are it’s coming to your town. In fact, it’s quite possible that TV stations in your own backyard have already consolidated, and you may not even know it’s happened. That’s because media companies have circumvented the Federal Communications Commission’s ownership rules in over 80 markets, quietly shuttering newsrooms at the expense of independent, local journalism.

Today, Free Press is launching a new campaign to demand an end to this covert consolidation. We’ve been studying these backroom deals for over a year, and today we are ready to unveil an exclusive interactive map detailing which media companies and stations are engaging in covert consolidation. We’re also releasing a new white paper, “Outsourcing the News”, which lays out our research and provides in-depth case studies of three covert consolidation deals.

Visit our new site, ChangetheChannels.org, to find out whether covert consolidation is impacting your community, and to learn what you can do about it.

What Exactly is Covert Consolidation?

Media consolidation is a dangerous problem, reducing the number of independent sources of news—that’s why there are rules to control it. But media companies have devised a way around those rules. Instead of one station buying the other, media companies are outsourcing their news and programming and handing over control of their newsrooms to their competitors. . In many cases, one news team produces a single newscast for multiple stations. The result: less news about your community and fewer journalists holding our leaders accountable.

Covert consolidation is already widespread. In its recent report, Information Needs of Communities, the FCC states that, "nearly one-third of TV stations say they are running news produced by another station."But the scope of this problem is far greater than the FCC report acknowledges. The FCC cites data that identifies “at least 25 television markets” where these deals are in place, but this only accounts for one kind of legal agreement that companies use. By broadening the scope of inquiry to include other similar agreements that also result in less competition, diversity and localism, the numbers increase significantly.

Free Press has identified almost 80 television markets where these deals are in place. In total, these deals involve more than 200 stations.

Report after report confirms that local TV is still the primary source for news in America. If local TV news doesn’t provide in-depth reporting from several independent sources, our communities won’t be informed, and our leaders can’t be held accountable. Perhaps worst of all, we’ll never know what we’re missing: Without journalists digging up stories, political scandals or corporate corruption can go completely undetected.

The FCC is currently reconsidering its media ownership rules, and the time is right to ask the FCC to get tough with stations that have circumvented FCC rules and abandoned local news. Click here to sign our letter urging the FCC to put an end to covert consolidation.