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After a long winter, spring has finally arrived and has brought with it more daylight and warmer temperatures—two occurrences that do not necessarily pair well with keeping up with broadcast regulatory dates and deadlines.  Here are some of the important dates coming in April.  Be sure to consult with your FCC counsel on all other important dates applicable to your own operations.

On or before April 1, radio stations in Texas (including LPFM stations) and television stations in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee must file their license renewal applications through the FCC’s Licensing and Management System (LMS).  Those stations must also file with the FCC a Broadcast EEO Program Report (Form 2100, Schedule 396).

Both radio and TV stations in the states listed above with April 1 renewal filing deadlines, as well as radio and TV stations in Delaware and Pennsylvania, if they are part of a station employment unit with 5 or more full-time employees (an employment unit is a station or a group of commonly controlled stations in the same market that share at least one employee), by April 1 must upload to their public file and post a link on their station website to their Annual EEO Public Inspection Report covering their hiring and employment outreach activities for the twelve months from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021.
Continue Reading April Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: License Renewal, Issues/Programs Lists, EEO, Webcasting Royalties and More

Last week, the FCC issued a hearing designation order, sending to an Administrative Law Judge the question of whether an AM station’s license renewal application should be granted.  The hearing seeks to gather evidence as to whether the renewal should be granted despite the station’s record, under its current licensee, where it was operating for only 36% of the time that the licensee owned the station prior to the renewal being filed, and for only 2 days in the 9 months in 2020 after the renewal was filed.  During much of the period that the station was operating, it operated at less than full power (according to the FCC, often without receiving an STA for that low power operation).

Because of these prolonged periods of silence, the FCC asks whether the licensee was really serving the public interest.  For example, if a station is not operating, it cannot cover local issues or broadcast EAS warnings.  Over the last several years, there have been several cases where the FCC has designated for hearing or revoked licenses of stations with records of non-operation for extended periods during a license renewal term, finding that broadcasters cannot warehouse spectrum.  See our articles here and here about some recent examples.  If a broadcast channel is not used by a licensee, these hearings are held to determine if the public interest might not be better served by taking the channel from its current licensee and awarding it to some other party who will make use of it.
Continue Reading FCC Hearing Designation Order Reminds Broadcasters that Long Periods Where They are Not Operating May Lead to License Renewal Problems

Here are some of the regulatory developments of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • Global Music Rights (GMR) has offered commercial radio stations an extension of their interim license for the public performance of

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Global Music Rights, one of the newest performing rights organization licensing the public performance of musical compositions, has agreed to extend its interim license with commercial radio broadcasters.  That license is set to expire at the end of March (see our article here).  This interim license has been offered and extended for the last several years to allow stations to perform GMR music while GMR litigates with the Radio Music Licensing Committee over whether GMR is subject to any sort of antitrust regulation of the rates that it sets (and GMR’s countersuit over whether the RMLC itself violates the antitrust rules as a buyer’s cartel, by allegedly organizing all the buyers of GMR’s music to hold out for a specific price).  We wrote about that litigation here.  With the pandemic, the lawsuit which should have already gone to trial is likely not going to be heard until possibly next year, as discovery in the case has been postponed until later this year.

Today, the RMLC notified radio broadcasters that GMR will again extend its interim license while the litigation plays out – but GMR wants a 20% increase in the royalties that it receives.  RMLC made clear that this is not a negotiated rate – it is one that GMR has imposed with no input from RMLC.  Stations should expect to hear from GMR about the extension by March 15.  If they do not, stations interested in the extended license should reach out to GMR.  Many stations are confused by this royalty, so we thought that we would provide some background.
Continue Reading GMR Offers to Extend Its Interim License With Commercial Radio Stations – But It Wants a 20% Increase in Royalty Payments

Yesterday the FCC  released another of its regular EEO audit notices (available here), asking over 200 radio and TV stations, and the station employment units with which they are associated (i.e., commonly owned stations serving the same area) , provide to the FCC (by posting the information in their online public inspection file) their  EEO Annual Public File reports for the last two years, as well as backup data showing  that the station in fact did everything that was required under the FCC rules.

To lighten the burden on stations due to the pandemic, certain requirements usually associated with these audits have been adopted.  Audited stations must provide representative copies of notices sent to employment outreach sources about each full-time vacancy as well as some documentation of the supplemental efforts that all station employment units with 5 or more full-time employees are required to perform (whether or not they had job openings in any year). These non-vacancy specific outreach efforts are designed to educate the community about broadcast employment positions and to train employees for more senior roles in broadcasting. Stations must also provide information about how they self-assessed the performance of their EEO program. Answers to certain other questions are also required.  Stations that are listed in the audit notice have until April 26, 2021 to upload this information into their online public file.
Continue Reading FCC Issues First Broadcast EEO Audit of 2021– Reviewing the Basics of the FCC’s EEO Rules

March brings springtime and, with it, a likely reprieve from the cold and extreme weather much of the country has been suffering through.  As noted below, though, March brings no reprieve from the routine regulatory dates and deadlines that fill a broadcaster’s calendar.

TV operators have until March 8 to file comments in the Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry looking to assess the impact of the abolition of the statutory copyright license that allowed satellite television operators to import distant network signals into TV markets where there were households arguably not being served by a local network affiliate (see our article here).
Continue Reading March Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: Copyright, White Spaces, and Zonecasting Comments; LPTV and Translator Analog-to-Digital Extension; Emergency Alerting for Streaming Companies, and More.

Here are some of the regulatory developments of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • The FCC has started planning for its next AM/FM radio auction (Auction 109) scheduled to begin on July 27.  Four

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It seems like whenever Democrats are elected to serve as President and take control of Congress, there is talk about the revival of the Fairness Doctrine as some panacea for restoring balance and civility to political debate.  In recent weeks, we have seen many articles blaming conservative talk radio for the current divisions in the country and for the widespread belief in discredited claims about political and social topics.  This same debate arose almost exactly 12 years ago following the election of President Obama (see our articles here and here about that debate).   In coming days, we will write about a new round of legislative proposals looking to impose content moderation rules on digital media (including a Florida proposal to essentially block social media platforms from de-platforming one candidate, while allowing another candidate access, and a recent Congressional proposal removing Section 230 immunity from digital platforms for certain kinds of speech).  But, given the discussion of reviving the old Fairness Doctrine, we thought it worth taking a look back at just what that Doctrine required, the reasons for its demise, and some of the issues that would surround any attempt to bring it back.

First, it is important to understand what the Doctrine covered and what it did not.  It was a broadcast doctrine adopted in 1949, in an era that pre-dated the political talk that we now see dominating so many cable networks.  It also was different from the Equal Time Rule which is still in effect for candidate appearances on broadcast stations.  The Fairness Doctrine required that stations provide balanced coverage of all controversial issues of public importance.  The Fairness Doctrine never required “equal time” in the sense of strict equality for each side of an issue on a minute-for-minute basis.  In talk programs and news coverage, a station just had to make sure that both points of view were presented in such a way that the listener would get exposure to them.  How that was done was left to the station’s discretion, and the FCC intervened in only the most egregious cases.
Continue Reading The Return of the Fairness Doctrine – What it Was and Why it Won’t Return

The FCC yesterday announced plans to hold an auction to award construction permits allowing the winners to build new radio stations. The auction notice includes 136 FM channels and, in a new wrinkle, 4 AM opportunities, for which bids will be able to be placed once the auction commences.  The list of channels to be auctioned is here – with many channels being in the state of Texas, with an assortment of others around the country. These channels are mostly those that had been included in an auction scheduled for last July which was cancelled because of COVID-19 (see our articles here and here).  In addition, a few newly available FM channels have been added to the list, as well as 4 AMs in the St. Louis area that are available because a licensee surrendered those licenses after a license renewal challenge.

The notice released yesterday asks for comments on the auction procedures to be used in awarding these channels, proposing procedures that are generally familiar to those who have participated in FM auctions in the past.  The auction is tentatively scheduled to begin on July 27. Working backward, that would mean that the initial “short-form” applications required for parties who want to participate in the auction would likely be due sometime in May.  Upfront payments equal to or greater than the minimum payments for the channels that an applicant ultimately wins in the auction will probably be due in June. 
Continue Reading Want a New Radio Station? FCC Proposes Procedures for a July 2021 Auction, Lists Channels to be Sold, and Imposes a Freeze on Certain Applications

Here are some of the regulatory developments of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.  Also, we include a quick look at some important dates in the future.

  • The Enforcement Bureau advised broadcasters (and other

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