If you’ve spent more than five minutes working in local television, you know that network affiliation switches happen all the time.

A contract runs out, a network wants better carriage or stronger local newscasts to lead into their programming, deals get cut in hotel suites at NATPE or NAB, and the affiliation moves down the dial. It is standard broadcast business. It has been happening since television was in black-and-white.

Apparently, nobody told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, ABC’s decision to move its affiliation in St. Louis from Sinclair’s KDNL to Gray Media’s KMOV has drawn scrutiny and formal inquiries from Carr.

KDNL has carried ABC programming for more than 30 years—and for much of that time, Sinclair didn’t even bother running a traditional local news department on the station, relying on off-and-on arrangements and syndicated content. So ABC decided to take its programming to Gray’s KMOV, a legacy powerhouse with an actual news operation.

A routine business negotiation between private companies, right?

Not in Brendan Carr’s FCC.

Once again, Carr is sticking the federal government’s nose where it doesn’t belong. The FCC is supposed to regulate spectrum, handle technical interference, and make sure public interest standards are met on the airwaves. It is notsupposed to be the local GM sitting in contract negotiations, micromanaging which private affiliate gets Grey’s Anatomyand World News Tonight.

Between weaponizing station license renewals against networks over jokes they don’t like and trying to referee private commercial affiliate agreements, Carr seems to think his job description is “Director of Television Operations for the United States.”

Networks change affiliations. Station groups fight for leverage. Contracts expire. That’s the free market at work in broadcasting.

Maybe someone should remind the Chairman that he runs a regulatory agency in D.C., not the programming department at 77 West 66th Street.

H/T WSJ