Non-compete clauses are used by many media companies to lock people in at the station and not allow them to work in the same market. Some non-competes go so far to not allow an employee to work in a market that has a station owned by your current company.

The Biden White House is planning to release an executive order focused on competition policy.

The order appears to take away some of the power of the companies and give it back to the employees. The order will encourage the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit noncompete agreements, which employers have increasingly used in recent years to try to hamper workers’ ability to quit for a better job.

Of course, this could be costly for the often cheap TV groups.

Say an Anchor at a station is making $150,000 a year and the station across the street wants to hire away that Anchor and pay them $200,000 a year. With the Anchor under a non-compete, they could not take that offer, unless they want to sit out their non-compete which could be as long as 6 months or a year.

With the new law in place, the Anchor could cross the street and start working at the station the next day.

Look at some of the CBS-owned stations as an example. When a talent’s contract has come up, a number of them have been offered to stay either no raise or even a pay cut. The non-compete kept them bound to that station in the market.

It doesn’t seem fair that you are told if you want to keep your job you must take a pay cut and you can’t look for another job in the market, because you are under a non-compete.

You can see that many TV groups will not like the order that President Biden is looking to pass. That also means that order will depend on the ability of regulators to carry out the rules the White House seeks and to write them in ways that survive legal challenges.

It is time for TV station employees to get paid what the market thinks they are worth and not lock them into non-competes that won’t let them explore that figure.

Just saying….