The origins of the annual Pillsbury Broadcasters’ Calendar have been lost to time, but it’s safe to say the new 2024 version is at least the 50th edition of this guidebook for the broadcast industry. While your own personal calendar may be full of “happy dates” like vacations and graduations, the 2024 Broadcasters’ Calendar is full of deadlines that prevent your happy dates from becoming very, very sad dates. Keeping close track of these dates and their impact permits a licensee to remain a licensee, and a broadcast employee to remain an employee, allowing you to keep taking those vacations and paying those school tuition bills.
The good news for broadcasters is that while 2024 will be a major year for political advertising (and the extensive Political File paperwork that comes with it; notice how everything positive in broadcasting comes with a regulatory cloud?), it is an off-year for regulatory deadlines. 2024 marks a brief respite between FCC license renewal cycles, the off-year for biennial ownership reports, and television broadcasters completed their three-year must-carry elections in 2023.
Of course, that still leaves dozens of deadlines of all kinds that broadcasters must meet in the coming year, and it is certainly possible that some of those may be moved and a few new ones added before it is time for the 2025 Broadcasters’ Calendar. Until then, keep a copy of the 2024 edition handy, and an eye on CommLawCenter for changes the coming year may bring.