The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to end a regulation that capped ownership of local TV stations that reach more than 39 percent of TV homes in the United States.

The 2-1 vote was along party lines, with FCC head Brendan Carr arguing that eliminating the rule would allow local station owners to compete on a level playing field with national networks.

"Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers," Carr said in prepared remarks at Thursday's FCC meeting. "Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming. We should learn from our mistakes with the local newspaper industry, and we should not let the same thing happen to the local broadcast TV industry. Trusted sources of local reporting, broadcast over the public airwaves, are worth protecting and worth fighting for."

Big station owners such as Nexstar and Sinclair had lobbied for removal of the limits, but many other station groups opposed the changes. Those include three of the station groups owned by the major broadcast networks: ABC, CBS and Fox.

"The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters, they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them," FCC commissioner Anna Gomez said in a statement. "Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve."

The move is expected to be challenged in court, in part because the current requires Congressional approval to increase or eliminate the ownership cap.