good faith negotation of retranmission consent

While January starts off with some regulatory deadlines that apply to all broadcasters – Quarterly Issues Programs lists must be placed in a station’s public file by the 10th of January – there are many other dates that come due this month, dates to which broadcasters need to pay careful attention. For TV stations, they need to file at the FCC by January 11 (as the 10th is a Sunday) Children’s Television Reports, listing all of the programming that they broadcast in the previous quarter addressing the educational and informational needs of children. Records showing a TV station’s compliance with the commercial limits in children’s television should also be placed in the station’s public file.  As we have written, missing Quarterly Issues Programs lists (see our articles here and here) and Children’s Television Reports (and even late Children’s Television Reports) provided the basis for most of the fines during the last renewal cycle (see, for instance, our article here) – even for missing reports from early in the renewal cycle and, for the Children’s Reports, even where the reports were filed (repeatedly) only a few days late. So it is important to meet the obligations imposed by these regular filing deadlines.

Starting on the first day of this new year, there are a host of other obligations and deadlines that arise. On January 1, TV stations need to be captioning clips of video programming that they make available on their websites or in their mobile apps, if those clips came from programming that was captioned when shown on TV. For more on that obligation, see our article on the new online captioning requirements here.
Continue Reading January Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Quarterly Issues Programs Lists and Children’s Television Reports, Incentive Auction, FM Translators for AM Stations, Webcasting Fees, LUR Windows and More

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?