One thing about being part of a heavily regulated industry—you know well in advance most of the regulatory obligations and deadlines you’ll be facing in the year ahead. While that brings no solace to broadcasters, it does lend a certain level of predictability to an often unpredictable industry.
For more decades than most of us can remember, Pillsbury’s Communications Practice has published its annual Broadcasters’ Calendar detailing filing deadlines facing broadcasters in the coming year. As the Calendar itself warns, however, these obligations can expand or contract (though expansion has unfortunately been the historical norm), and deadlines can appear, disappear, and move with great rapidity.
Broadcasters have therefore long known that you start the year with the Broadcasters’ Calendar close at hand, while keeping an eye on CommLawCenter and the industry trades to see what obligations and deadlines will be added, subtracted, or altered over the course of the year.
Thus it has been, and thus shall it always be.
Some years are more likely than others to bring surprises, however. With Trump 2.0 arriving upon the scene and new leadership coming to the FCC in January, the winds of change are likely to blow particularly hard in 2025. Broadcasters are hoping those winds will be at their backs, bringing long overdue deregulation before social media giants drive broadcasters over the same ledge that the remaining newspapers cling to by their fingertips.
While broadcasters are admittedly nervous regarding soon-to-be Chairman Carr’s comments about reinvigorating the public interest standard for broadcasters given that the phrase has lost all meaning under recent Commissions, his clarification that his focus rests primarily upon the national networks rather than local broadcasters has brought a limited degree of relief. Still, broadcasters will need to keep a close eye on regulatory developments in 2025, which promises to be a very eventful year.
So keep the 2025 Broadcasters’ Calendar close at hand in the coming year, and hope that the 2026 edition will be appreciably thinner.