This Week in Regulation: September 19, 2020 to September 25, 2020

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Here are some of the regulatory and legal actions and developments of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

  • The day before 2020 annual regulatory fees were due, the FCC extended the deadline from 11:59 p.m. on Friday, September 25 to 11:59 p.m. on Monday, September, 28. (Public Notice)
  • Broadcast trade publication TVNewsCheck published “A Broadcaster’s Guide to Washington Issues,” our periodic survey of the legal and regulatory issues facing television   It is a good resource for both new and veteran broadcasters looking to understand the status of pending legal and regulatory issues for the television industry.
  • For stations looking to stay on top of their KidVid reporting, the updated form to be used for the 2020 Children’s Television Programming Report is now available and can be accessed through the FCC’s Licensing and Management System (LMS). Stations can begin to prepare the form, update it during the remainder of the year, saving the information to be ready to file in January.  The FCC reminds television broadcasters that the form cannot be finalized and submitted until January 1, 2021.  As a reminder, KidVid reports are now filed annually, not quarterly as they were until the rules were changed in 2019.  (Public Notice)
  • The FCC’s Media Bureau has waived the requirement for noncommercial educational (NCE) translator stations to send their carriage election notifications by email to multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD), as required under the FCC’s new carriage election requirements.  The waiver came out of a petition from PBS and the trade association America’s Public Television Stations who said that, in many cases, NCE translators do not even know which MVPDs are carrying them and have no easy way to determine this information, making notification time-consuming and costly with no practical benefit as NCE translators can only “elect” must-carry. (Memorandum Opinion and Order)

Courtesy Broadcast Law Blog