(THE INTERCEPT) Lee Fang, November 5, 2017 — IN A RULING seen as a major win for the largest media conglomerates in the country, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the Main Studio Rule, a 77-year-old regulation that required local television and radio broadcasters to maintain physical studios in the communities they serve.

The Tuesday vote, along party lines, with Republican commissioners supporting repeal, clears the way for major media companies to continue buying up local stations and eliminating positions for journalists, while centralizing programming decisions.

One of the primary arguments made by media companies petitioning the FCC for the repeal was that social media renders local stations an anachronistic requirement of the past.

The National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group for major broadcasting companies, argued that local studios are no longer necessary because stations today “are active on multiple social media platforms” that allow them to interact with their audience.

Nexstar Media Group, a conglomerate that owns 170 stations, including KRON-TV in San Francisco and the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, told the agency that consumers prefer to interact with their “stations through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.” Trinity Broadcasting and McCarthy Radio Enterprises made similar arguments in the filings, claiming that social media sites such as Facebook can replace the interactions with the local community that physical studios once provided.

Univision, in its filing, noted that “Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.” are better platforms for facilitating “continuous community-station discourse,” rather than hosting multiple personnel at physical locations.

One of the most brazen arguments came from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, a group long viewed as a front for industry.

Source: Fake News Alert: Media Conglomerates Convince FCC That Facebook Can Replace Local News Stations