By: Scott R. Flick and Christine A. Reilly The next Quarterly Issues/Programs List (“Quarterly List”) must be placed in stations’ local public inspection files by July 10, 2011, reflecting information for the months of April, May and June, 2011. Content of the Quarterly List The FCC requires each broadcast station…
By Lauren Lynch Flick and Christine A. Reilly The next Children’s Television Programming Report must be filed with the FCC and placed in stations’ local Public Inspection Files by July 10, 2011, reflecting programming aired during the months of April, May and June, 2011. Statutory and Regulatory Requirements As a…
Hope everyone had a great July 4th! With the long weekend now behind us, I wanted to remind readers that July 10th represents a significant filing deadline for radio and television stations. Below is a brief summary of the quarterly deadlines, as well as links to our Client Alerts describing…
As I wrote in April, the FCC decided after much delay to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a pair of lower court rulings seriously challenging the FCC’s prohibition on indecent programming that airs before 10pm. Today the Supreme Court announced that it has agreed to hear the matter,…
As I wrote back in February, the federal government has decided to conduct the first-ever national test of the Emergency Alert System. Today, FEMA and the FCC announced that the test will occur on November 9, 2011, at 2pm Eastern Standard Time. On that date, the public will hear a…
Last week, the FCC released its long-awaited Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the goal of which is to modify Part 11 of the FCC’s Rules in order to allow for Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) delivery of the “next generation” Emergency Alert System (EAS). A copy of the NPRM can…
The FCC today announced a freeze on the acceptance of any petitions for rulemaking seeking to change a station’s assigned channel in the Post-Transition Table of DTV Allotments. While application freezes were once relatively rare at the FCC, they became quite common as a planning mechanism during the years when…
The staggered deadlines for filing Biennial Ownership Reports by noncommercial educational radio and television stations remain in effect and are tied to the anniversary of stations’ respective renewal filing deadlines. Noncommercial educational radio stations licensed to communities in Arizona, District of Columbia, Idaho, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Virginia, West…
During the last license renewal cycle, the FCC handed out an unprecedented number of fines to broadcasters who failed to file their license renewal applications on time. In some cases, a station only learned of its failure to file because the FCC sent it a letter notifying it that the…
Broadcasters don’t know it yet, but recent actions by the Department of Justice suggest that the federal government may be moving closer to raining on their upcoming license renewals. The reason? Medical marijuana advertising. While it seems like a recent phenomenon, the first state laws permitting medical marijuana go back…