If there was any doubt that the late-2023 confirmation of Anna Gomez as the fifth commissioner would bring a flurry of FCC activity in 2024, the FCC has laid those questions to rest. In addition to a $150,000 good faith NAL, $500,000 sponsorship ID consent decree, $26,000 EEO report NAL,…
This past Friday, the FCC released a Third Report and Order and Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Multicast Licensing Order), setting forth rules regarding Next Gen multicast hosting arrangements and seeking further comment on ATSC 3.0-related patent issues. Broadcasters providing or contemplating ATSC 3.0 services are likely well aware…
For those racing to meet tonight’s deadline to file your 2021 Regulatory Fees, we have some good news. The FCC just released a Public Notice announcing that the deadline for submitting those fees has been extended to 11:59pm on September 27, 2021. The Notice is silent as to whether the…
Each year with the end of summer comes an announcement from the FCC as to how it is divvying up its operating costs to then charge its regulatees in the form of regulatory fees. This annual ritual, required by Congress, makes the FCC virtually unique among federal agencies in funding…
The FCC announced this afternoon that “effective immediately, [we] will no longer allow visitors into our facilities, absent special permission from the Office of Managing Director.” However, that announcement, strange as it would be under normal circumstances, was of no particular importance. That’s because the same document noted that, starting…
The FCC has released its finalized schedule of annual Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2019, and thanks to the collective efforts of all 50 State Broadcasters Associations and the National Association of Broadcasters, there is some good news for radio stations and satellite television stations. But before we get to…
The next Quarterly Issues/Programs List (“Quarterly List”) must be placed in stations’ Public Inspection Files by April 10, 2019, reflecting information for the months of January, February and March 2019. Content of the Quarterly List The FCC requires each broadcast station to air a reasonable amount of programming responsive to significant…
Late today, the FCC released a Public Notice further extending the deadlines for filings that it extended yesterday, which it had already extended by a Public Notice released before the FCC shutdown on January 3 (did you follow that?). Skipping over those intermediate steps, the final result now boils down to this…
With the partial government shutdown mercifully at an end (for now), broadcasters must hurry to update their Online Public Inspection File and make up for a month’s worth of missed filings. As we wrote earlier this month, filing deadlines that landed during the shutdown were extended (with a few exceptions)…
One of the intriguing aspects of posting on CommLawCenter is the level of interest a particular post generates. Posts announcing something of vital importance to broadcasters will sometimes make hardly a ripple, while more mundane posts attract surprising interest. Indeed, one of CommLawCenter’s most-read posts in its early years was…