The FCC has just issued a Public Notice announcing that all Regulatory Fees will be due on or before September 20. The FCC Website on the fees, where broadcasters can look up the fees owned for each of their stations, is now live.  That page gives the September 20 deadline.  The main fee webpage can be found here:  http://www.fccfees.com/index.html.  Broadcasters can look up the fees for their specific stations on a webpage that is linked to from the main fee page.  To go there directly, go to this page: http://www.fccfees.com/request_all.htm

Remember, broadcasters must also pay fees for all auxiliary licenses that they hold (e.g. STLs, RPUs, etc.).  If a broadcaster is the licensee of some sort of private radio, or has satellite uplink facilities, separate fees will be due for those stations too, also by the September 20 deadline.  We previously posted an article on how the FCC arrived at the new fees, and the amount of the broadcast-specific fees for each category of station in our article here.  Remember to pay these fees on time, or face a 25% late fee penalty.  In addition, it is likely that all of your pending applications will be held up while the fee is unpaid.  So pay attention to the September 20 deadline!

 

Note – 8/23/2013, 4:40 PM EDT – We are hearing from a number of users that the FCC’s electronic system does not automatically populate a station’s fee reports with its broadcast auxiliary licenses, and that it sometimes includes old licenses, or fails to include new ones. TV satellite stations also need to make sure that the proper fee is reflected, as the system will sometimes consider them as full-power stations, and assess a higher fee.   So licensees need to be very careful in reviewing the reports generated by the FCC’s system to make sure that all of their licenses (and their fee obligations) are included, and are assessed the proper fee.