Discussion of FCC, copyright, advertising and other legal issues of importance to radio and television broadcasters and other media companies
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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As Fall approaches and kids head back to school, be sure not to lose track of the regulatory dates and deadlines in September. We outline some of those dates below. One date is applicable to all commercial broadcasters, the obligation to pay regulatory fees. While the exact due date has not yet been announced, look for that announcement any day as the Commission adopted the decision setting those fees last week. See the Report and Order, here, for more details and to see what your station owes. As part of that proceeding, the FCC also decided to seek comment on assessing fees in the future on users of unlicensed spectrum, especially large tech companies. Many such users manufacture devices or provide other applications that use spectrum or otherwise benefit from FCC regulation, but right now do not pay fees. Watch for comment dates on this proposal in the near future. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking begins on page 38, here.
Comment dates have been set for parties that want to weigh in on the FCC’s media ownership rules. They have until September 2 to file their comments in the 2018 Quadrennial Review proceeding, which focuses most heavily on local radio ownership regulation. These comments are to refresh the record with updated information about the state of the media marketplace since initial comments in the proceeding were filed over two years ago. Reply comments are due by October 1. We wrote more about this review of media ownership, here.…
Continue Reading September Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: Regulatory Fees, Media Ownership and Sponsorship Identification Comments, Auction Applications, and More
The minority tax certificate is back in the news with revised bills being introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. We wrote about a version of this bill introduced in the last session of Congress here. The tax certificate offers perhaps the most meaningful route to increasing diversity in broadcast ownership. While the certificate was abolished by Congress over 25 years ago, these new bills signaling the potential for its revival merits another examination of what this policy did and why it was effective, and what is now being proposed.
The minority tax certificate was a program designed to provide broadcasters with an economic incentive to sell their stations to minority owners. Rather than directly subsidizing the potential owners, the certificate instead gave a tax break to sellers of broadcast stations that incentivized them to sell to a minority-owned business even if there were multiple bidders for their properties. If the seller sold its station to a minority-owned business, the seller could take the proceeds from the sale and roll those proceeds over into a new media property without recognizing the taxable gain from the sale. Unlike the typical like-kind exchange where the roll-over into a new property has to proceed within a few months of the sale, the tax certificate treated the sale as an involuntary sale (like the sale of a property because of a government’s exercise of eminent domain) under Section 1033 of the tax code, giving the seller several years to roll the proceeds over into a new purchase. At that point, the new property would have the same tax basis as the old – meaning that no gain would be recognized until the sale of the new property. In the closing decades of the last century, this policy spurred many sales to minority-controlled companies by broadcasters looking not to get out of the business, but instead looking to realign their holdings or to move up into larger markets. Several hundred radio and TV stations were purchased under this program in the last 20 years of the program’s existence. Why was this seemingly successful program abandoned?…
Continue Reading Bills Introduced to Bring Back Tax Certificate to Foster Diversity in Broadcast Ownership – Exploring the Proposals
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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On Friday, the FCC released another of its regular EEO audit notices (notice and list of affected stations available here), asking approximately 200 radio and TV stations, and the station employment units with which they are associated (i.e., commonly owned stations serving the same area), to respond to the audit notices by September 20, 2021. Audited stations must upload their response to their online public inspection file. The response should include copies of the employment unit’s 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. This is the second audit of 2021 (see our article here on the first audit commenced earlier this year). It appears that this audit targets stations in states who have recently had license renewals reviewed, as stations in states with recent license renewals would already have their EEO record under review as part of the renewal process.
Audited stations must provide representative copies of notices sent to employment outreach sources about each full-time vacancy as well as 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, which are outlined as “menu options” in the FCC’s rules, 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. …
Continue Reading FCC Audits Another 200 Broadcast Stations on EEO Performance
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
…
While the regulatory deadlines in August may be a bit lighter than other months, there are still several important regulatory dates to keep track of, some of which are detailed below. All broadcasters should have August 11 circled and highlighted on their calendars as the date of the next National EAS Test. And there are renewal and EEO deadlines, as well as several comment dates on FCC regulatory proposals.
After skipping last year’s annual test due to the pandemic, FEMA and the FCC chose August 11 to hold this year’s National EAS Test. All broadcasters should work with their engineers and technical staff to make sure their EAS equipment is operating properly and is set to monitoring the stations that they are required to monitor by their state EAS plan. By the day after the test, August 12, broadcasters must file Form Two in the EAS Test Reporting System (ETRS) portal with “day of test” information. Then, by September 27, broadcasters must file in ETRS Form Three with detailed post-test data. The information shared with FEMA and the FCC allows them to determine the successes and failures of the test.…
Continue Reading August Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: National EAS Test, License Renewals, EEO Reporting, Political Broadcasting Rules Proposals, Media Ownership Comments, Annual Regulatory Fees, and More
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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