Articles Posted in Fees

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As we reported last week, the FCC adopted its Report and Order establishing the annual regulatory fees for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026.  Today, the FCC released a Public Notice announcing that those regulatory fees must be paid no later than 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, on September 24, 2026.

In a second Public Notice, the Commission provided more details regarding how to pay those fees.  Fees are due for feeable authorizations granted on or before October 1, 2025.  As in recent years, the fees must be paid electronically through the Commission’s CORES system, which can be found here.  Payments may be made by credit card, debit card, ACH transfer, or wire transfer.  The Commission will not accept payments made by check, money order, or cashier’s check.  There is a $24,999.99 maximum for the use of a credit card.  A larger fee amount cannot be broken into multiple payments of less than $24,999.99 and multiple payments on the same credit card in one day may be aggregated for purposes of hitting that limit.  So those whose fees will exceed $24,999.99 are encouraged to use another payment method.

Early payment is advisable given the large number of submissions to be made on the FCC’s platform in a short period of time, as well as the processing time required for wire transfers or ACH payments, to ensure that payments are processed by the deadline.  Late payments trigger a mandatory 25% penalty, along with interest charges on any unpaid fees.  The FCC will credit partial payments, but any unpaid balances are still subject to the 25% penalty and interest.  Failure to timely pay all regulatory fees can also result in dismissal of pending applications, a stop on all future application processing, and potentially license revocation.

In a third Public Notice issued today, the FCC outlined the procedures licensees should follow if they need to seek relief from regulatory fee obligations by filing a request for waiver, reduction, deferral, or installment payment plan.  Requests citing financial hardship must include supporting documentation sufficient to demonstrate that payment of the fees would impose a financial hardship on the licensee.  Any such filing is due by the payment deadline, as late or unsupported requests are generally denied.

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Yesterday, the FCC released its Report and Order adopting a schedule of regulatory fees to cover the Commission’s Fiscal Year 2026 salaries and expenses appropriation of $416,112,000. The Order largely follows the approach set out in the FCC’s April 2026 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), continuing the full-time employee (FTE)-based methodology the FCC has used in recent years and again reallocating certain FTEs from indirect FTEs of the Office of General Counsel, Office of Economics and Analytics, and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, to direct FTEs of various of the core licensing bureaus.

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Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published the FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes:

  • FCC Proposes $25,000 Fines Against Eight Companies for Failing to Respond to Enforcement Bureau Letters of Inquiry
  • Louisiana Broadband Provider Enters $10,000 Consent Decree to Resolve Investigation into Inaccurate Reimbursement Program Certification
  • Texas AM Stations Face Possible License Revocation Over Unpaid Regulatory Fees

Eight Companies Face $25,000 Fines for Failing to Respond to FCC Letters of Inquiry
The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau (Bureau) issued eight Notices of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NALs) proposing a total of $200,000 in fines against eight companies for failing to respond to Bureau Letters of Inquiry (LOIs). Each company faces a proposed $25,000 fine for failing to respond to an LOI seeking information about whether it marketed radiofrequency equipment in the United States that was included on the FCC’s Covered List.

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On August 29, 2025, the FCC released its Report and Order establishing the annual regulatory fees for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025.  The Commission followed that release with a Public Notice announcing that regulatory fees must be paid no later than 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time on September 25, 2025. The fees must be paid for all licenses and initial construction permits granted on or before October 1, 2024.

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Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published the FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others.  This month’s issue includes:

  • TV Group Owner Enters $222,500 Consent Decree Over Pornographic Broadcast Hack
  • Kentucky Radio Station License Revoked Over Unpaid Regulatory Fees
  • FCC Threatens Chinese Telecom Provider With Fines for Failure to Fully Respond to FCC Inquiries

Pornography on Background Monitor During Newscast Leads to Costly Consent Decree

A group owner of TV stations entered into a Consent Decree with the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to resolve an investigation into the broadcast of indecent material during a 6 p.m. newscast.

Section 73.3999 of the FCC’s Rules prohibits the broadcast of obscene material at any time and prohibits the broadcast of indecent material between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., primarily to protect children from being exposed to inappropriate content.

After receiving a complaint about pornographic material appearing during a weather report in October 2021, the FCC sent a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) to the station’s licensee in November 2021.   The licensee’s parent company responded to the LOI and confirmed that the material aired for approximately 13 seconds on a monitor which was visible behind the weatherperson during the weather segment.  The broadcaster explained that the accidental airing of the material, which was aired without the station’s prior knowledge or involvement, was caused by an unauthorized third party who exploited a wireless screencasting feature of the on-set monitor to display the content.  The legacy wireless network had been installed prior to the licensee’s acquisition of the station and, as was discovered after the incident, it lacked password protection.

Upon spotting the material displayed on the monitor, the station promptly switched to a full-screen weather graphic to end the broadcast of the material, issued an on-air apology, and conducted an internal investigation which included working with local law enforcement to identify the party responsible for transmitting the material to the monitor.  The broadcaster reported that the content did not pass through the station’s normal production systems and attributed the breach to unauthorized access via the unsecured legacy wireless network.  Upon discovering that the monitor had a screencasting capability that had been exploited, the broadcaster subsequently disabled screencasting capabilities for all monitors located at its stations, deactivated the vulnerable network, and took the added step of removing all wireless components from its existing monitors and any newly acquired monitors at all of its stations.

Despite the police’s inability to determine who was responsible for exploiting the previously unknown wireless capability of the monitor, and the extraordinary steps taken by the broadcaster to prevent a recurrence not just at this station, but at all of its stations, the FCC pursued an investigation of the broadcaster.

To resolve the investigation, the broadcaster entered into a Consent Decree with the Enforcement Bureau.  Under the terms of the Consent Decree, the broadcaster agreed to make a “voluntary contribution” of $222,500 to the United States Treasury, implement a multi-year Compliance Plan (including appointing a Compliance Officer, creating a Compliance Manual, conducting employee training and establishing operating procedures to prevent such an occurrence in the future, and committing to promptly notify the FCC of any future violations of either the indecency rules or of the Consent Decree), and submit regular compliance reports to the FCC over a three-year period.

FCC Revokes Kentucky Radio Station’s License After Years of Unpaid Regulatory Fees

 The FCC revoked the license of a Kentucky AM radio station for failing to pay regulatory fees for six fiscal years, going back to 2013.

Under Section 9 of the Communications Act and Section 1.1151 of the FCC’s Rules, the Commission has the authority to assess annual fees to cover its operational costs.  Late payment of these fees incurs a 25% penalty plus interest. Continue reading →

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Earlier this week, the FCC opened CORES to accept FY 2024 regulatory fee payments and announced a payment deadline of September 26, 2024.  Since that time, however, broadcasters have encountered a number of issues when trying to pay their fees.  The most common issues include:

  • Difficulty accessing the system
  • Assessment of inaccurate fees
  • Failure to assess fees for all stations associated with a licensee’s FRN
  • Stations being listed in incorrect service categories (e.g., a TV translator being listed as a full-power TV station, and vice versa)
  • Fee-exempt stations being listed as feeable

The FCC today acknowledged that incorrect population count information in particular is resulting in incorrect fee assessments for a significant number of AM and FM stations.  In response, the FCC has temporarily deactivated the fccfees.com lookup site and has also added the following notice on the CORES log-in page:

NOTICE: The FCC is continuing to do its due diligence to reevaluate the population count information for AM and FM broadcasters for FY 2024 regulatory fees. We expect to have this situation resolved early next week. In the meantime, we request that AM and FM broadcasters do not make any payments in CORES. Thank you for your patience.

Accordingly, AM and FM broadcasters should hold off on generating their fee reports or submitting regulatory fee payments to the FCC until this issue is resolved.  Other broadcasters would also be wise to pay close attention to the fees that CORES assesses for their stations to ensure that they do not under- or over-pay and that all stations are properly accounted for.  We recommend that you seek assistance from experienced FCC counsel if you encounter any of the issues listed above (or other system issues). As noted in our previous post, failure to pay in full can lead to significant interest and penalties (and efforts to recoup overpayments may be time consuming).

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Following last week’s adoption of the 2024 Regulatory Fee Report and Order, which we discussed here, the Federal Communications Commission today released its annual Public Notice setting 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on September 26, 2024 as the payment deadline for fiscal year 2024 regulatory fees.  The FCC also opened  the online system for submitting those payments.

Note that the FCC’s old “Fee Filer” system has been retired and regulatory fees must now be paid via the FCC’s Commission Registration System (CORES).  Logging into CORES requires users to set up a personal account using an email and password of their choosing.  We have previously provided step-by-step instructions for how to do so here.  Additionally, in March 2024, CORES moved to a two-step login authentication process, whereby each time a user logs into CORES, the user will be prompted to request a six-digit verification code that will be emailed to the email address(es) associated with the username.  The user must then enter the code into CORES to finish the log-in process.

As this is still a fairly new process, we suggest logging in well before the payment deadline to ensure you are able to access the system and successfully pay your regulatory fees, as late or unpaid fees incur interest and are assessed a 25% penalty, and can put a licensee in “red light” status.  Stations that are unable to make their regulatory fee payment by the deadline or that need additional relief such as a payment plan or reduction/deferral of their fees should make those requests to the FCC as soon as possible.  The Commission released a separate Public Notice detailing the procedures to apply for such relief.

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Today, the Federal Communications Commission released its Report and Order setting this year’s annual regulatory fee amounts.  Payments will be made electronically via the FCC’s Commission Registration System (CORES), but the FCC has yet to announce the date the system will open or the date the fees are due.  Given that the fees must be collected before the end of this month, that announcement is expected very soon.

For fiscal year (FY) 2024, the FCC will be collecting a total of $390,192,000 to fund the FCC’s operations, the same amount as last year.  For the second year in a row, however, broadcasters will see a decrease in their regulatory fees.  As we noted in 2023, this decrease can be credited at least in part to the years-long effort by state broadcasters associations and the NAB to persuade the FCC to reevaluate its methodology for allocating regulatory fees and to expand the pool of entities that are charged regulatory fees.  These past few years have seen significant progress on the first initiative, resulting in this year’s reduced fees, but the battle to convince the FCC to expand its payor base (as dictated by the governing statute) continues.

For television stations, the FCC will use the same population-based methodology for FY 2024 as it used in FY 2023.  However, the FCC has adopted a fee of $.006598 per-person-served for FY 2024, which is a decrease from the $.007799 per-person-served used for FY 2023 TV regulatory fees.  Some additional shifts will be caused by FY 2024 fees being the first to incorporate 2020 U.S. Census data into these calculations.

Radio broadcasters will also see a decrease in their regulatory fees this year, with a reduction of approximately 5% across the board.  To determine the precise regulatory fees owed, broadcasters should consult Appendices C (Radio) and G (Television) at the end of the Report and Order.

Another change for FY 2024 is the elimination of the temporary relief measures that were adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The FCC had provided relief to payors facing financial hardship as a result of the pandemic, including allowing regulatees in “red light” status (those already behind on regulatory fee or other payments to the FCC) to “request waiver, reduction, deferral, and/or installment payment of their FY 2023 regulatory fees, provided that those regulatees resolve all of the delinquent debt they owe to the Commission in advance of the Commission’s decision on their requests for relief.” Continue reading →

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Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published the FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others.  This month’s issue includes:

  • Florida Radio Station Faces $14,000 Proposed Fine for Contest Rule Violations
  • $6,500 Fines Targeted at Mississippi and Tennessee FM Translators for Late-Filed License Renewal Applications and Unauthorized Operation
  • FCC Continues Focus on Collecting Unpaid Regulatory Fees from Broadcasters

FCC Fines Florida Radio Station for Contest Rule Violations

The FCC proposed to fine a radio broadcaster $14,000 for violating the Commission’s Contest Rule while conducting a multi-station contest.  Specifically, the FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NAL) asserting that the broadcaster failed to select and/or notify contest winners in a timely fashion, as required by the licensee’s announced contest terms.

Section 73.1216 of the FCC’s Rules requires a licensee to “fully and accurately disclose the material terms” of a contest it broadcasts or promotes and to conduct the contest “substantially as announced and advertised.”  Material terms include, among other things, eligibility restrictions, the time and means of selecting winners, and the extent, nature, and value of prizes.  Prizes must be awarded promptly, and the FCC has consistently found violations where stations failed to award prizes in accordance with the announced contest terms.

In April 2021, the FCC received a complaint alleging that one of the licensee’s radio stations had not conducted a contest in a manner “substantially as announced and advertised.”  The Enforcement Bureau issued a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) to the licensee in August 2021.  In its November 2021 response, the licensee explained that during the first half of 2021, it had conducted a nationwide contest on 194 of its stations.  During the contest, each participating station announced a contest “keyword” once an hour, for eleven hours each day, for 27 days.  Listeners could qualify to win by submitting this keyword via text message or the internet before the end of the hour in which the word was announced.  One national winner would then be picked each hour from across all stations, creating 297 winners (11 per day x 27 days).  The prize was a $1,000 check and winners were to be notified within 72 hours, according to contest terms.

Upon review, the licensee discovered that as a result of human error, the contest had not been conducted according to the announced contest terms.  In its LOI response, the licensee disclosed that (1) the part-time employee tasked with randomly selecting a national winner from among those qualified sometimes failed to do so; (2) the part-time employee’s manager did not provide supervision to confirm winners were selected; and (3) some winners were never notified they had been selected.  Ultimately, 50 winners out of 297 were not timely selected and/or notified.  After receiving the LOI but before submitting its response to the FCC, the licensee selected and notified 50 “replacement” winners.

The licensee argued that its actions did not amount to a violation of the rules because (1) an insubstantial number of winners that were not timely selected/notified compared to the total number of winners; (2) the contest terms only required the licensee to select “a total of up to, but not more than,” 297 verified winners; (3) it was not done intentionally, but was merely the “poor performance of two employees” that caused the selection/notification failures; and (4) the licensee went to “great lengths” to mitigate the selection/notification failures, eventually awarding prizes to all “winners” who completed the required paperwork. Continue reading →

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Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published the FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others.  This month’s issue includes:

  • Failure to Pay Annual Regulatory Fees Trips Up Texas AM Radio Licensee
  • Communications Provider for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumers Resolves Investigation with Multimillion Dollar Consent Decree
  • Investigation into Unauthorized Transfer of Control of Colorado Radio Stations Leads to $3,400 Fine

License of Texas AM Station Could Be Revoked If Regulatory Fees Remain Unpaid

The licensee of a Texas AM station must either pay its overdue regulatory fees or demonstrate why the fees are inapplicable or should be waived or deferred.  According to the Federal Communications Commission’s records, the radio station currently owes unpaid regulatory fees exceeding $3,000.  The fees were originally due on September 30, 2022, and the outstanding amount continues to accrue interest and other charges until it is paid in full.

Under Section 9 of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 1.1151 of the FCC’s Rules, the FCC has the authority to assess annual fees to cover its operational costs.  These fees are typically due in late September to ensure the agency is fully funded at the start of the federal government’s fiscal year in October.  Late payment of these fees incurs a 25% penalty plus interest.  If licensees fail to pay regulatory fees and any penalties or interest, the FCC may revoke their affected licenses and other authorizations.

Prior to issuing an Order to Pay or to Show Cause, the FCC sent a demand letter to the licensee.  When payment was not received, the Commission transferred the debt to the U.S. Department of Treasury.  Subsequently, the FCC requested the return of the matter from the Treasury Department in order to pursue further collection efforts.

The Order demands that within 60 days the licensee either pay the full outstanding debt or demonstrate why the fee is inapplicable or should be waived or deferred.  The Media Bureau noted in the Order that failing to provide evidence of payment or to demonstrate why the fee isn’t applicable by the 60-day deadline could result in revocation of the station’s license. Continue reading →