Trump officializes FCC puppet showTrump officializes FCC puppet show

President Trump this week inked an executive order asserting direct White House control over regulatory agencies like the FCC. In doing so, he's stripping the veneer of independence from an agency that has moved forward mostly along partisan lines for decades.

The real question, though, is whether anything will change.

According to Blair Levin, a policy adviser to New Street Research and a former high-level FCC official, the answer is probably not.

Unless you're Comcast, Paramount Global or Disney.

"While legal and political battles will follow in the executive order's wake, the impact on investors will be more about timing and uncertainty than substance, except in broadcast arena where the risk of [license] revocation by the FCC is now higher, even if such a decision is unlikely to be upheld by the courts," Levin wrote in a recent note to investors.

In the broadcast industry, Trump and his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, are moving against broadcasters like NBCUniversal, partly because Trump doesn't like their news operations.

However, Levin doesn't expect Carr to make any real progress against Comcast and other broadcasters.

"We don't think Carr would go that far," Levin wrote of the possibility of the FCC revoking broadcasters' licenses. "And we don't believe any court would uphold such an FCC order on the grounds Trump has stated, but the executive order increases the odds that Carr and the courts will be tested on that issue."

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