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With so much focus on the upcoming regulatory fee deadline, broadcasters may well overlook another more imminent deadline – Thursday, September 15 is the deadline for broadcasters to have assured themselves that no buyer of program time on their stations is a foreign government or an agent of a foreign government.  As we wrote here, the NAB successfully obtained a court decision eliminating the obligation for broadcasters to verify that no buyer of program time is listed in the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act database or on the FCC’s database of foreign government video programmers.  However, the underlying obligation of licensees to obtain certifications from buyers of program time on their stations confirming that they are not a foreign government, or an agent of a foreign government, remains in place.

New agreements for the sale of program time should have, since March 15, contained representations from the program buyer that they are not a foreign government or a representative of a foreign government, and that no foreign government has paid the programmer to produce the programs or to place it on broadcast stations.  Programming provided to the station for free with the expectation that it will be broadcast should also be confirmed as not coming from a foreign government or an agent of a foreign government.  By this Thursday (September 15), stations need to verify that the providers of programming under agreements that were in existence before March 15 are not foreign governments or their agents. …
Continue Reading Don’t Forget September 15 Deadline For Broadcasters to Assure That Buyers of Program Time Are Not Foreign Governments or Their Agents

When providing briefings on FCC issues at a number of broadcast conventions in the past few months, I find that broadcasters are most often surprised by the relatively new FCC rule that requires that they verify that any buyer of programming time on their station is not an agent of a foreign government.  This week, the burden that this rule (about which we wrote here) imposed on broadcasters was eased, when a Court overturned one aspect of the obligations imposed by the FCC.

The FCC rule, Section73.1212(j), is designed to ensure that all broadcast programming that is paid for or sponsored by a foreign government or one of its agents is specifically identified on the air as having foreign government backing.  The FCC required specific wording for on-air identifications for this programming paid for or produced by foreign governments or those that they finance.  In addition, broadcast stations are required to get assurances in writing from all parties who pay for programming on their stations that the programmer is not a foreign government or an agent of any such government.  The FCC rule went further, requiring that each station verify by checking FCC and DOJ databases that any programmer who certified that they were not a foreign government agent was in fact not a government agent.  It was that last requirement – the requirement to check DOJ and FCC databases – that the Court rejected this week.
Continue Reading Court Overturns Part of FCC Requirement that Broadcasters Confirm that Programmers are Not Foreign Government Agents