MVPDs, Radio Stations Gear Up for FCC Look Into Extending Online Filing Obligations
A public notice focusing on whether FCC online public and political filing requirements should be extended to pay-TV operators and radio stations could have different implications for different companies in those industries, some broadcast and cable attorneys said in interviews last week. The process may be more burdensome for cable operators than it was for TV stations, a cable attorney said. The Media Bureau PN stemmed from a petition for the changes filed by the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and Sunlight Foundation, which asked for multichannel video programming distributors to be included (CD Aug 8 p11). All TV stations began complying with the obligation July 1 (CD July 7 p7).
Sooner is probably better, said Todd Gray, a Gray Miller attorney who represents noncommercial educational radio stations. He said his clients would probably support moving to an online public file for radio, especially those clients with TV and radio components. Some stations got rid of their local paper-based public files for TV, and they've wanted to do that for their radio components to avoid having two separate sets of obligations, he said. “It’s a foregone conclusion that the whole world is moving online and it’s only a matter of time before radio gets pulled into the regime."
For talk radio, expanding the online file obligation to radio could be problematic, said the National Religious Broadcasters. If online postings about radio ads by advocacy groups on controversial subjects are mandated, “we can expect a wave of retaliation from some extremists against not only the station but against the advocacy groups that are advertisers or that act as sponsors,” said NRB General Counsel Craig Parshall. He said such retaliation ensued during the debate over Proposition 8 in California. The current rule should be maintained because it requires individuals “who have an interest in the ‘political file’ portion of public files of radio stations, to show up in person and inspect the files at the station,” he emailed. The current rule is geared toward those in the station’s listening audience area, rather than “a universe of persons who might be trolling the Internet,” he said. NAB is seeking feedback from its radio board on the proceeding, a spokesman said.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on political ads “seeking to influence cable and satellite viewers and radio listeners, and the stations already maintain these files,” Campaign Legal Center said in a news release. Making them available online is not a hardship, it said.
American Cable Association members will continue to keep detailed files as required, said ACA President Matthew Polka. Although creating electronic documents has become much easier, perhaps the biggest question is how public and political files would have to be maintained online, he said. ACA has members of all different sizes, “and some allowance, as always, must be provided to take into account the disproportionate burden of regulations that often falls on smaller companies,” he said.
While a transition to online filing makes sense in the digital age, it could be more of a burden on cable operators than broadcasters, a cable attorney said. “We operate a lot more systems than a broadcaster would.” A cable company may have as many as 20 systems in a designated market area, and has more offices than broadcasters have stations, the attorney said.
This obligation won’t be imposed overnight, “as a formal rulemaking process will probably take at least a year, and probably more, to adopt final rules,” said David Oxenford, a radio attorney at Wilkinson Barker, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1uwwOyF). Perhaps the proposal to extend the obligations to radio “will prompt the review of the effectiveness of the online file before any extension is adopted,” he said. An FCC spokeswoman referred to a public notice issued last year that sought comment on how TV stations were affected by the online political and public file obligation.
The PN doesn’t mean that the imposition of new online reporting requirements is imminent, said Harry Cole, a broadcast attorney at Fletcher Heald. On the negative side, the notice “clearly signals that some such changes are clearly on the commission’s radar screen,” he said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1A0INYh).