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As the calendar flips to March, many of us have put our trust in Punxsutawney Phil’s weather forecasting expertise that an early spring is coming.  A surer place to put our trust, however, is in the guarantee that there are always some regulatory dates about which broadcasters should be aware.  While March is a month without with many of the regularly scheduled deadlines for renewals, EEO public file reports or Quarterly Issues Programs lists, there are still plenty of regulatory dates about which you should take notice.

The closest we come in March to a broadly applicable FCC filing deadline is the requirement that, by March 30, 2020 television broadcasters must complete and submit through LMS the FCC’s new Form 2100, Schedule H documenting their compliance with the requirements under the children’s television (KidVid) rules to broadcast educational and informational programming directed to children.  This report will document that programming from September 16, 2019 (when the new KidVid rules went into effect) to December 31, 2019.  The March 30 date is a transitional date as the FCC moves away from the old quarterly children’s television reports to ones that will be filed annually – in future years by the end of January.  This year, however, the FCC took time to develop the form for the new annual report and to explain how it should be used, thus the extra time to file.  Once filed, TV broadcasters won’t file another children’s television report until early 2021 reporting on compliance for all of 2020.  For more on the transition to the new KidVid obligations, read our articles here, here, and here.  To learn how to work with the new form, watch the FCC’s archived instructional webinar here.
Continue Reading March Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters—Children’s Television Reports, Lowest Unit Rate Windows, EEO Audit Responses, AM Revitalization Comments, License Renewal Preparation and More

The FCC yesterday released another of its regular EEO audit notices (available here), asking that approximately 240 radio stations and about 80 TV stations, and the station employment units (commonly owned stations serving the same area) with which they are associated, provide to the FCC (by posting the information in their online public inspection file) their last two year’s EEO Annual Public File reports, as well as backing data to show that the station in fact did everything that was required under the FCC rules. Audited stations must provide copies of notices sent to employment outreach sources about each full-time vacancy at the stations 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 are designed to educate the community about broadcast employment positions and to train employees for more senior roles in broadcasting. Stations must also provide, in response to the audit, information about how they self-assessed the performance of their EEO program. Stations that are listed in the audit notice have until March 23, 2020 to upload this information into their online public file.

The FCC has promised to randomly audit 5% of all broadcast stations each year. As the response (and the audit letter itself) must be uploaded to the public file, it can be reviewed not only by the FCC, but also by anyone else with an internet connection anywhere, at any time.  The license renewal cycle which began last year adds to the importance of this audit, as a broadcaster does not want a recent compliance issue to headline the record the FCC will be reviewing with its license renewal (see our article here about the license renewal cycle). So, whether you are on the list or not, this is a good time for broadcasters to review what is required by the FCC’s EEO rules.
Continue Reading FCC Issues First EEO Audit of 2020 Targeting 320 Radio and Television Stations – Reviewing the Basics of the FCC’s EEO Rules

Most years, at some point in January, we look into our crystal ball and try to see some of the legal and regulatory issues likely to face broadcasters.  We already provided a calendar of the routine regulatory filings that are due this year (see our Broadcaster’s Regulatory Calendar).  But not on that calendar are the policy issues that will affect the regulatory landscape in the coming year, and into the future.  This year, the biggest issue will no doubt be the November election.  Obviously, broadcasters must deal with the many day-to-day issues that arise in an election year including the rates to be charged political candidates, the access to airtime afforded to those candidates, and the challenges associated with the content of issue advertising that non-candidate groups seek to transmit to the public.  The election in November will also result in a President being inaugurated in just less than a year – which could signal a continuation of the current policies at the FCC or potentially send the Commission in a far different direction.  With the time that the election campaigns will demand from Congress, and its current attention to the impeachment, Congress is unlikely to have time to tackle much broadcast legislation this year.

The broadcast performance royalty is one of those issues likely on hold this year.  While it was recently re-introduced in Congress (see our article here), it is a struggle for any copyright legislation to get through Congress and, in a year like the upcoming one, moving a bill like the controversial performance royalty likely will likely not be high on the priorities of Congressional leaders.  This issue will not go away – it will be back in future Congresses – so broadcasters still need to consider a long-term strategy to deal with the issue (see, for instance, our article here on one such strategy that also helps resolve some of the music royalty issues we mention later in this article).
Continue Reading Looking Ahead to the Rest of 2020 – Potential Legal and Regulatory Issues For the Remainder of the Year

With the holiday season getting smaller in the rear-view mirror and many parts of the country dealing with ice, snow, and single-digit temperatures, broadcasters could be forgiven for dreaming about the sunshine and warmth that come with spring.  Before spring arrives, however, broadcasters need to tend to important regulatory matters in February.  And, if you find yourself eager to plan past February, use our 2020 Broadcasters’ Calendar as a reference tool for tracking regulatory dates through the end of 2020.

But focusing on the month ahead, by February 3, all AM, FM, LPFM, and FM translator stations in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi must file their license renewal applications.  For the full-power stations in the state, there’s an additional EEO task to complete irrespective of how many employees a station employment unit (SEU) has.  Before filing for license renewal, stations in these three states must submit FCC Schedule 396. This schedule is the Broadcast Equal Employment Opportunity Program Report, which is a reporting to the FCC of the SEU’s equal employment opportunity activities for the last license period (SEUs with fewer than five full-time employees are not required to maintain an EEO recruitment program and are only required to check a box that they have fewer than 5 full-time employees and skip ahead to the certification).  The sequencing here is important: When filing for license renewal, the application (Schedule 303-S) asks for the file number of your already-filed Schedule 396.  So, without having already filed the schedule, you won’t be able to complete your renewal application.
Continue Reading February Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters—License Renewals, EEO Reporting, Rulemaking Comments, FM Auction Filing Deadline, Lowest Unit Rate Windows, and More

While many of us were trying to enjoy the holidays, the world of regulation kept right on moving, seemingly never taking time off.  So we thought that we ought to highlight some of the actions taken by the FCC in the last couple weeks and to also remind you of some of the upcoming January regulatory deadlines.

Before Christmas, we highlighted some of the regulatory dates for January – including the Quarterly Issues Programs Lists due to be placed in the online public file of all full-power stations by January 10.  Also on the list of dates in our post on January deadlines are the minimum SoundExchange fees due in January for most radio stations and other webcasters streaming programming on the Internet.  January also brings the deadline for Biennial Ownership Reports (postponed from their normal November 1 filing deadline).

In that summary of January regulatory dates, we had mentioned that the initial filing of the new Annual Children’s Television Programming Report would be due this month.  But, over the holiday week, the FCC extended that filing deadline for that report until March 30 to give broadcasters time to familiarize themselves with the new forms.  The FCC will be doing a webinar on the new form on January 23.  In addition, the FCC announced that many of the other changes in the children’s television rules that were awaiting review under the Paperwork Reduction Act had been approved and are now effective.  See our article here for more details.
Continue Reading While You Were on Vacation….Looking at FCC Regulatory Actions over the Holidays and Deadlines for January

Late Friday, the FCC issued an Order reinstating the FCC’s 2016 ownership rules, recognizing that the changes made in those rules in 2017 (see our post here) were no longer effective because the Third Circuit Court of Appeals had thrown out the 2017 decision. See our post here on the Third Circuit decision and our article here on the court’s denial of rehearing en banc.  While the FCC may still try to appeal the Third Circuit decision to the Supreme Court, the Third Circuit’s mandate has issued, meaning that its order is effective even if a Supreme Court appeal is filed.

Among the rule changes that have been rendered a nullity are the abolition of the broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rule (once again reinforcing what we have written several times, that the rule may well outlive the daily newspaper) and the radio-television cross-ownership rule, the local TV ownership rule that had allowed combinations of two TV stations in the same market even if there were not 8 independent voices in the market after the combination, and changes to the FCC’s processing policy with respect to radio embedded markets.  These changes required the FCC to also issue two Public Notices dealing with these changes.
Continue Reading FCC Reinstates 2016 Ownership Order and Gives Instructions for Sale and Renewal Applications in Light of Third Circuit Decision Overturning Rule Changes

With many Americans using the holiday season to rest and recharge, broadcasters should do the same but not forget that January is a busy month for complying with several important regulatory deadlines for broadcast stations.  These include dates that regularly occur for broadcasters, as well as some unique to this month.  In fact, with the start of the lowest unit rate windows for primaries and caucuses in many states, January is a very busy regulatory month.  So don’t head off to Grandma’s house without making sure that you have all of your regulatory obligations under control.

One date applicable to all full-power stations is the requirement that, by Friday, January 10, 2020, all commercial and noncommercial radio and television stations must upload to their online public file their quarterly issues/programs list for the period covering October 1 – December 31, 2019.  The issues/programs list demonstrates the station’s “most significant treatment of community issues” during the three-month period covered by each quarterly report.  We wrote about the importance of these reports many times (see, for instance, our posts here and here).  With all public files now online, FCC staff, viewers or listeners, or anyone with an internet connection can easily look at your public file, see when you uploaded your Quarterly Report, and review the contents of it.  In the current renewal cycle, the FCC has issued two fines of $15,000 each to stations that did not bother with the preparation of these lists (see our posts here and here on those fines).  In past years, the FCC has shown a willingness to fine stations or hold up their license renewals or both (see here and here) over public file issues where there was some but not complete compliance with the obligations to retain these issues/programs lists for the entire renewal term.  For a short video on the basics of the quarterly issues/programs list and the online public inspection file, see here.
Continue Reading January Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Quarterly Issues/Programs Lists, Children’s Television Annual Report, EEO, License Renewal, Political Rate Windows, FM Auction Dates and More

At its October open meeting, the FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking looking to abolish its rule that bars a broadcast licensee from prohibiting a competitor from using a “unique” transmitter site that it controls. The rule was adopted decades ago and never used. It provides that a license renewal would not be granted…

November is not one of those months with due dates for renewal filings, EEO public file reports or quarterly issues programs reports. Some of those obligations wait until December, when renewal filings for radio stations in Georgia and Alabama are due by December 2 (as December 1 falls on a weekend). Due for uploading on or before December 1 are EEO public file reports for station employment units with 5 or more full-time employees for radio or television stations in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont.

November 1 does signal the first day on which radio and TV stations can file their Biennial Ownership Reports. As we wrote here, the FCC has extended the deadline date for those filings until January 31, 2020 as the FCC is making refinements in its forms in the LMS filing system. Reports are to reflect the licensee’s ownership as of October 1, 2019 so stations have the information that they need and can start filing their reports later this week.
Continue Reading November Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Ownership Reports, Comment Deadlines, LPTV Reimbursement Filing Deadline, a Forum to Examine the Future of the Broadcast Industry, and More

A pattern is being established – $15,000 and a short-term, 2-year license renewal seem to have become the standard penalty for stations that are missing all of their Quarterly Issues Programs Lists for a license renewal term.  Yesterday, the FCC’s Media Bureau issued a proposed fine to a Virginia station that had failed to complete any Quarterly Issues Programs lists during its 8-year license renewal term.  The proposed $15,000 fine, and a renewal for only 2 years rather than the normal 8-year term, is the same penalty proposed two weeks ago in another case (which we wrote about here) where a station had similar problems.  These two cases seem to announce that this is the base penalty for stations that simply have not bothered to complete any Quarterly Issues Programs lists.

Yet to be seen is what happens when a broadcaster has completed some but not all of the required public file paperwork.  Last week, the FCC granted many of the license renewal applications from the first round of radio license renewals (for stations in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia).  The granted applications were the ones that had few if any problems.  With the FCC having acted at the two extremes – renewal grants for those with no issues and $15,000 fines and short-term renewals for those with significant issues – the Commission now needs to fill in the holes, deciding what to do with those applicants that fell somewhere between these two extremes.  Watch for decisions from the FCC to see whether penalties are imposed on stations that fall in the middle in coming months.
Continue Reading Another $15,000 Fine Proposed for Missing Issues Programs Lists – And a Fine for a Late-Filed Renewal