Articles Posted in September, 2024

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).

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.

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 →