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The last week has been a busy one for the FCC in preparing for the December applications by broadcasters for participation in the TV incentive auction. The incentive auction will, of course, offer TV broadcasters money (in some cases, lots of it, at least initially) to vacate their spectrum so that the television band can be “repacked” – consolidated into fewer channels – with the reclaimed spectrum being divided into different size blocks and resold to wireless companies for wireless broadband uses. In the last week, the FCC has made public two forms that will be important to that effort – the Form 177 which (as we wrote here) will be filed in December by broadcasters initially interested in participating in the auction, and the Form 2100 Schedule 399, which will be used to claim reimbursement by TV stations that do not surrender their licenses but which are forced to change channels as part of the repacking. The Form 177, the form that broadcasters must submit if they want to take part in the reverse auction, is not easy to find, but is available here, on the website of the Office of Management and Budget, where it has been submitted for review under the Paperwork Reduction Act before it can be released to broadcasters for submission by the December 18 filing deadline.

Similarly, and a bit more publicly, the FCC has released the form, Form 2100 Schedule 399, which broadcasters who do not sell out in the incentive auction, but instead are repacked and forced to move to another channel, will use to claim reimbursement for such moves. The form reveals the categories of expenses for which reimbursement would be made. This form is also being submitted to OMB for approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act, according to the FCC Public Notice which provided notice of the form.
Continue Reading Closing In on the Incentive Auction – Broadcast Application and Reimbursement Forms Available for Review, Reverse Auction Workshop and TV Interference Calculations

Late Friday, the FCC denied the request of several broadcasters to extend the time to comment on the FCC proceeding looking at the requirement of “good faith” in retransmission consent negotiations, though it did extend the time for reply comments by two weeks. The FCC is reviewing the good faith requirement, to determine if…

November is another of those months with no regular filing obligations – no EEO public file and Mid-Term reports, no noncommercial ownership reports, and no quarterly issues programs lists or children’s television reports. EEO public file reports and noncommercial station ownership reports, being tied to renewal dates, will be back in December. See our Broadcaster’s Calendar, here, for information about the states where stations have such obligations. For all commercial radio and TV stations, November also means that they should be completing their Biennial Ownership Reports, which are due on December 2 (extended from the November 1 due date by FCC action noted, see our article here). Those reports submit a snapshot of broadcast station ownership as of October 1, so they can be filed at any time in November.

The end of November also brings the effective date of the requirement that TV stations convert the text of their emergency alerts run in entertainment programs (like weather alerts) into speech, with that audio to be broadcast on the station’s SAP channel. See our articles here and here on that requirement.
Continue Reading November Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Incentive Auction and Biennial Ownership Report Preparation, Reg Fee Comments, Music Issues, Text to Speech Emergency Information and More

The FCC requires each full-power broadcast station, commercial and noncommercial, to maintain a public inspection file.  Even though this is a longstanding FCC requirement, there are always questions about what goes into the file, and how long those materials must be retained.  The week before last, I conducted a webinar for about 20 state broadcast associations on the FCC’s public file requirements for broadcast stations.  The slides from that presentation, outlining the requirements for the file, and the required retention period for many of the documents that make up that file, are available here.

While many broadcasters wonder if the public file is really worth the time that it takes to maintain given the nonexistent traffic to view that file at most stations, the FCC has continued to insist on its importance – fining or otherwise sanctioning stations for missing or late filed documents.  See, for instance, this case admonishing a TV station for failing to get all of its documents into its online public file in a timely fashion (an admonishment is the equivalent of putting a demerit in the station’s permanent record that could be considered as a prior violation in assessing fines if the FCC finds the station in violation for some other offence).  Particularly at license renewal time, a complete public file can be crucial, as missing documents lead to big fines (see, for instance, our articles here and here), and failure to disclose those missing documents can lead to even more harsh penalties (see our article here).  So maintaining an accurate and complete public file is important.  Quarterly issues programs lists are often the most overlooked requirement.
Continue Reading The Care and Feeding of the Broadcast Public Inspection File – Requirements and Retention Periods, A Presentation on the Issues

TV stations have in the past few years been hit with many requirements for making their programming – especially emergency information – accessible to all people within their service areas. Two deadlines loom in the very short term that stations need to remember – the requirements for converting text based emergency information aired on their stations outside of news and EAS alerts (usually crawls dealing with issues such as severe weather alerts) into speech for airing on their SAP channels, and the requirement that any clips transmitted through IP technology (e.g. to computers or through apps) must contain captions if those clips were taken from programming that was broadcast with captions.

Some trade press reports have indicated that some TV stations are still having issues with the requirement that stations take emergency information broadcast outside of news programming and not in EAS alerts, and convert that information to speech to be broadcast on the station’s SAP channel (in some cases requiring that the station activate a SAP channel if they did not already have one).  This rule is meant to cover information like weather alerts typically carried in crawls during entertainment programs.  The rule was supposed to take effect in May, but was extended until November 30 when it appeared that most TV stations were not ready to meet the original deadline.  We wrote about the requirements and the extension here and here. The extension also put on hold obligations to include school closing alerts on the SAP channel when it became clear that the time necessary to broadcast those alert on the SAP channel (and to do it twice, as required by the rules for the audio alerts on the SAP channels) would likely overwhelm the ability to carry any other information.  The extension order also extended until November 2016 the obligation to aurally describe on the SAP channel any non-textual, graphical information conveyed by the station outside of news programs (e.g. weather radar images).  But the general obligation to convert text to speech still goes into effect at the end of next month – so stations need to be ready.
Continue Reading New Accessibility Compliance Deadlines for TV Stations Coming Very Soon

Today, the FCC published notice in the Federal Register of the adoption of the new simplified rules for publicizing the material rules for contests conducted by broadcasters. This publication was for purposes of review by the Office of Management and Budget under the Paperwork Reduction Act, a review necessary before any new rules requiring…

A month ago, the FCC released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking looking to reassess the requirement that broadcasters and MVPDs (cable and satellite television) engage in “good faith” negotiations over the retransmission consent necessary for the MVPD to rebroadcast the signal of a broadcast television station, triggering numerous questions throughout the industry (and among financial analysts who follow the television industry) as to what that release meant. On Friday, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published in the Federal Register, setting the dates for the filing of comments on the questions raised by the Commission. Comments are due on December 1, and Reply Comments on December 31. Given that this may well be the same period of time in which TV stations are preparing their initial applications for the incentive auction, and given that the reply falls in the middle of the holidays, don’t be surprised if requests for an extension of these comment dates are filed.

But no matter the dates on which comments are filed, this proceeding obviously raises a number of important issues. While many industry analysts wondered if, by the very fact that the Notice was released, it signaled the FCC’s intent to “go after” broadcasters in their retransmission consent dealings – perhaps as a way to encourage them to participate in the incentive auction by threatening the revenue from the retransmission consent fees that they now receive. But what most of these observers fail to note is that the release of the NPRM by September 1 was actually not the initiated by the FCC Commissioners. Instead, the action was mandated by Congress when it adopted STELAR, the law that extended the right of satellite television companies to retransmit the signals of local television stations. That legislations included many required actions and studies (see our summary here), including the requirement that this NPRM be started by September 1. Thus, the Commission actually waited as long as it could in releasing this rulemaking order.
Continue Reading Dates Set for Comments on Good Faith Negotiation of Retransmission Consent Agreements – What is the FCC Asking?