It is not the FCC that protects the locals. It is the copyright law. Television networks are like McDonalds, they have a contract with the network for their location only. They are given the right to broadcast in their area only by the network. The network has acquired the rights for OTA viewing of all the shows that constitute network programming.
In fact a law had to be passed that allowed a blanket copyright exception for DBS. It essentially said the rebroadcast of the local channel was allowed via satellite verses OTA, even if the contracted copyrighted programming did not explicitly allow it. A television show has countless copyright contracts. Every actor, writer, musician, etc. has their conditions. The owner of the show could be for example Warner Brothers who owns the contracts and may allow a network to show it OTA, but then licenses it to iTunes, and later sells DVDs. There was an initial problem with a lot of programming when DVDs came out since the contracts never thought of anything like DVD and everything had to be licensed again. Now of course a television production includes rights for OTA, cable, DBS, DVD/BD, internet streaming etc, but who knows what distribution method may come up in the future.
Essentially Congress not the FCC would have to change the copyright law to allow out of market reception. Even then there would be eminent domain issues since the Federal government would be taking the value of the copyrights away. To use the McDonalds example again, it would be like a law being passed that said McDonalds corporation had to allow McDonalds restaurants sell food from any location they wished.