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FCC Grants Retroactive Six-Month Extension of Audible Crawl Waiver

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Many television broadcasters were left scratching their heads last month when a longtime waiver associated with the FCC’s emergency information accessibility rules expired on November 26.  That confusion was resolved today, when the Media Bureau granted the National Association of Broadcasters’ (“NAB”) request for a retroactive extension of the waiver of the “audible crawl” rule for inherently graphical non-textual information.

As we’ve previously detailed, the “audible crawl” rule requires TV stations and other video programming distributors to use a secondary audio stream to aurally present any emergency information that is presented visually (e.g., in an on-screen crawl) in non-newscast programming.  Ever since the rule went into effect on May 26, 2015, however, the FCC has granted a limited waiver for inherently graphical information—think Doppler radar and weather maps—acknowledging it is not yet technologically feasible for broadcasters to aurally convey such information.

On November 15, 2024, the National Association of Broadcasters (“NAB”) filed a Petition for Rulemaking asking the FCC to amend the rule and clarify that the requirement to audibly present inherently graphical non-textual emergency information applies only if a station is not already displaying a text crawl that shares the same or similar information depicted in the on-screen graphic (which the station would, under existing rules, be required to make aurally available).  The FCC issued a public notice seeking comment on NAB’s petition on November 25, 2024.  The public notice did not extend the existing waiver, which subsequently expired on November 26, leaving broadcasters to decide whether to continue airing such inherently graphical information without providing an audible crawl, or to cease airing such information altogether.

NAB thus filed a request for a retroactive extension of the waiver on November 27, 2024 to resolve this dilemma, noting that some large broadcasters had ceased airing weather radar maps to avoid violating the rule.  Following an expedited round of comments, the Media Bureau granted the request with a waiver that applies retroactively from November 26, 2024 to May 27, 2025 or until the FCC rules on the NAB’s petition, whichever is sooner.

Interested parties should note the comment and reply comment deadlines of December 26, 2024 and January 9, 2025, respectively, on the NAB’s pending Petition for Rulemaking.