From Broadcast Law Blog

In May, the FCC announced that it would be conducting an auction in February 2027 for construction permits to build over 130 new FM stations in various locations around the country (see our article here). Last week, the FCC issued a Public Notice that provided the remaining details about the auction, including a September filing window for “short-form” applications to participate in the auction,

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 FCC’s Order adopted in June that requires broadcasters to quickly adopt new security practices to protect their EAS systems was published in the Federal Register,

In early July, we wrote about the FCC’s decision to require that all broadcasters take measures to secure their EAS operations – and in the process secure their entire program chain – to make sure that malicious actors can’t hack into their systems and send false alerts.  The FCC today published in the Federal Register the order making those changes,

Although many, including Congress, take the last of their summer vacations in August, there are still many dates to which broadcasters should be paying attention this month.  One deadline that most commercial broadcasters should be anticipating is the FCC’s Order that will set the amount of their Annual Regulatory Fees.  Payment of those fees will be due sometime in September before the October 1 start of the federal government’s new fiscal year.  

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.

• At its regular monthly Open Meeting, the FCC adopted a Report and Order, Order of Proposed Modification, and Order on Reconsideration which reconfigures the Upper C-band (3.7-4.2 GHz) for terrestrial wireless use. 

This week, there was a report in the broadcast trade press about a lawsuit filed against a North Dakota radio station for allegedly posting on its Facebook page a copyrighted photograph of a well-known rock musician– without getting permission from the professional photographer who took that picture and owned the copyright.  This was not a situation where some listener posted a picture on the station’s site,

Last week, the FCC released a draft Report and Order which, if adopted at its August regular monthly open meeting, will repeal the 39% cap that currently limits the nationwide reach of local television station owners.  That cap prohibits one owner from having interests in TV stations reaching more than 39% of the nation’s TV households.  Computation of the 39% reach assumes that any TV station in a Nielsen TV market reaches all of the TV households in that market. 

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 FCC released a draft Report and Order, which if adopted at its August 6 regular monthly Open Meeting, would repeal the 39% national TV ownership cap. 

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 FCC’s Media Bureau announced that the upcoming new noncommercial educational FM translator reserved band (88.1-91.9 MHz) filing window has been moved from August to November to accommodate applicants affiliated with schools on summer holidays and other noncommercial companies who argued that an August window did not give them enough time to prepare their applications. 

In June 2006, I started writing the Broadcast Law Blog, discussing issues like the broadcast ownership rules, music licensing issues, FCC filing windows for new broadcast stations, AM radio improvements, political broadcasting issues, and an upcoming technology transition for digital television.  It is funny how these same issues, or ones very close to these issues, are still what we are writing about 20 years later. 

The FCC had scheduled an August 2026 filing window for licensees of noncommercial AM or FM stations and LPFM operators to file applications for new FM translators in the Reserved Band (88.1 MHz to 91.9 MHz) (see our articles here and here on the filing window).  However, after the filing window was announced, CBI, Inc., representing college broadcasters,

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.

• In Trump v. Slaughter, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the President’s power to remove independent federal agency heads by upholding his firing of an FTC Commissioner—a decision seemingly giving the President the power to fire members of most Congressionally created “independent agencies” that exercise executive duties including interpreting and administering laws.