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October is, on paper, another busy month of regulatory deadlines for broadcasters.  But there is again the looming possibility of a federal government shutdown beginning October 1 if Congress fails to fund the government for the coming year (or pass a “continuing resolution” to allow government agencies to function at their current levels).  While as of today there are reports of a plan to extend funding through December, until a continuing resolution is passed, the threat remains.  If a shutdown does occur, the FCC, the FTC, and the Copyright Office may have to pause their operations which may result in some of the regulatory deadlines discussed below being delayed.  However, in some cases agencies have leftover funding to keep them functioning for a few extra days.  Stay tuned to see if any of the dates below have to be rescheduled. [Update – 9/26/2024, 9:00 AM – a continuing resolution extending government funding through December 20 was passed late yesterday by both the House and the Senate averting, for now, the shutdown about which we were concerned. Thus, the deadlines listed below are in effect as scheduled]

Assuming this recurring issue is resolved, let’s look at some of the October dates and deadlines, starting with the routine dates of importance to broadcasters. October 1 is the deadline for radio and television station employment units in Alaska, American Samoa, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Iowa, Missouri, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington with five or more full-time employees to upload their Annual EEO Public File Report to their stations’ Online Public Inspection Files.  A station employment unit is a station or cluster of commonly controlled stations serving the same general geographic area having at least one common employee.  For employment units with five or more full-time employees, the annual report covers hiring and employment outreach activities for the prior year.  A link to the uploaded report must also be included on the home page of each station’s website, if the station has a website.  Be timely getting these reports into your station’s OPIF, as even a single late report can lead to FCC fines (see our article here about a recent $26,000 fine for a single late EEO report).Continue Reading October 2024 Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Quarterly Issues Programs Lists, Annual EEO Public File Reports, ETRS Form One, Comment Deadlines, and More

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

  • Some of the big news for broadcasters this week came not from the FCC, but from the Federal Trade Commission:
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from this past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • The FCC’s Media Bureau announced that August 15 is the effective date of the FCC’s expanded foreign government sponsorship identification
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from this past 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 past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • On July 28, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an opinion rejecting appeals
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • The American Music Fairness Act, proposing to enact a sound recording performance royalty for over-the-air broadcasters, was introduced in
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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.

  • The FCC’s new rules that permit AM broadcasters to convert to all-digital operations became effective April 29.  The new rules

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In several recent cases, the FCC has denied exemptions from the requirement that programming carried on TV stations and MVPDs have closed captions to serve the hearing impaired members of the viewing audience. While exemptions from these requirements are allowed if a programmer can demonstrate that the captioning would present an economic hardship, these waivers are difficult to receive as a programmer must show that, looking at its overall operations, there are insufficient financial resources to afford the captioning for the program (see our article here). In the recent cases, the FCC has looked beyond simply the net income of the programmer in deciding if the programmer is financially capable of paying for the captioning, and in cases released yesterday, the FCC also looked at the overall assets of the programmer to see if it has the capacity to caption the program. Even if funds must be diverted from other programs of the programmer, the availability of funds to the programming organization was enough for the FCC to deny the requested exemption. Specifically, in the three recent cases, religious organizations which produced a single program claimed that, in order to caption their programs, they would have to divert resources from other programs. The FCC found that, as long as the money is there, the programs need to be captioned even if other activities of the organization suffer.

The FCC made that clear in a case decided a few weeks ago. There, it decided that, if a church had sufficient income to pay for captioning, even if it had to divert resources from other “ministries” engaged in by the church, it could not escape the obligation to caption its program. That case was relied on in another decision released yesterday, where a religious organization had been operating at a close to break-even mark over the two years for which it provided its finances, as the FCC said that it had sufficient assets to pay for the captioning – not relying solely on the income of the organization. In another case involving a larger church with greater income and expenses (which were also roughly in balance in the last two years according to the financial statements provided), the FCC there too looked to the current assets of the church (including investments in securities, bank deposits and pledges receivable). The fact that these assets were significantly in excess of current liabilities, led to a determination that captioning was financially feasible for this church. The FCC also rejected an argument that its rules placed an unconstitutional burden on religious freedom – finding that the burden was one imposed on all programmers and was not directed to religious programmers, and was therefore constitutional. So what does it take to get an exemption?
Continue Reading Church Programming Not Exempt From Captioning Requirements – FCC Looks to Total Assets of Programmer in Denying Economic Exemptions, and Decides There are No Religious Freedom Constitutional Issues

We are often asked by television broadcasters if specialty programming – particularly local programming, like a local church’s broadcast of its Sunday morning church service – is covered by the FCC’s closed captioning obligations.  In a decision released on Friday, the FCC staff denied the request of a church for an exemption from the rules requiring the closed captioning of most television programming, and may have helped to make clear an answer to those questions.  This decision also helps to clear up a big question that has been hanging over such programs, for over 3 years since the FCC reversed dozens of prior waivers granted by its staff to nonprofit groups claiming that the captioning would be economically burdensome on their operations (including the waiver that had been granted to this church).  So what factors did the Commission review in denying this “economically burdensome” waiver request?

In 2011, the Commission stated that its staff had to consider the overall circumstances of each petitioner in evaluating economic waivers of the captioning rules, and could not simply rely on the fact that the petitioner was a nonprofit organization the FCC.  After revoking the waivers, the Commission asked the groups whose waivers were revoked to refile their requests with greater detail and support, not simply relying on the fact that the proponent was a nonprofit organization.  Factors to be considered in evaluating any claim that the captioning obligation was economically burdensome include: (1) the cost of the closed captions for the programming and attempts of the programmer to find cheaper sources of captioning; (2) the impact of the captioning obligation on the operation of the provider or program owner; (3) detailed information on the financial resources of the provider or program owner including income and expense statements for the prior two years; (4) attempts to get outside sponsors for the programming or support from the station on which the programming is to be broadcast; and (5) the type of operations of the provider or program owner.  In applying these factors in the decision released on Friday, the FCC staff concluded that the church had not justified a waiver because it had sufficient funds from which to pay the cost of the captioning. 
Continue Reading FCC Denies Closed Captioning Waiver for Church Service – Clarifying New Standards on “Economically Burdensome” Exceptions to Captioning Requirements

As we reported last week, the FCC has adopted a Report and Order establishing rules for the closed captioning of video programming delivered via Internet protocol (i.e., IP video), as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). DWT has now released an advisory with further details about the new…