The primary goal of the law was to “let anyone enter any communications business – to let any communications business compete in any market against any other.”[2] Thus, the statute is often described as an attempt to deregulate the American broadcasting and telecommunications markets due to technological convergence.[3] The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been praised for incentivizing the expansion of networks and the offering of new services across the United States.[4] At the same time, it is often criticized for enabling market concentration in the media and telecommunications industries.[5][6]
We used to have laws against this sort of thing…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
But then modern neoliberalism showed up and put an end to that…
Like, are you mad Sinclair Broadcasting bought up local TV stations and force them to read identical scripts?
They couldn’t have done that until 1996, and there was a reason those regulations existed prior.