Broadcasters Propose Working Group, Pilot Program before Requiring Online Political File Disclosure
Putting up-to-date records of political ad sales in a broadcaster’s online public file could get very expensive, the NAB and broadcasters said in comments to the FCC last week. The comments came in response to a further rulemaking about updating stations’ disclosure obligations that would set up a centralized FCC database of public files. Broadcasters offered several suggestions for studying and testing the system before implementing it. Public interest groups praised the FCC for taking the step and told the agency it should require stations to include most of the major components that currently make up their public files when submitting information to the FCC’s proposed new system. Meanwhile, the American Cable Association told the commission it should require stations to disclose their shared services and local marketing agreements with other nearby broadcasters “that facilitate coordinated retransmission consent negotiations."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Above all, it’s time for the public information available in broadcasters’ public files to be accessible online, said public interest groups including Free Press, Media Access Project, the New America Foundation, Common Cause, the Benton Foundation, Campaign Legal Center and the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ in joint comments. The public has long been stymied in accessing the files by geography, recalcitrant staff, limited station hours and copying costs, all of which “are easily eliminated by technological developments and the relative ubiquity of internet access,” they said. They argued against limiting access to the material to residents of a station’s DMA. “Imposing such a residence verification restriction is antithetical to the very purpose of the public inspection file, which is to facilitate access to information, not hinder it by erecting unnecessary and unjustifiable hurdles."
Putting all the information included in stations’ public files online would be too costly for many stations, broadcasters said. “For some TV stations, the political file can contain many thousands of pages, covering multiple federal state and local races and especially during busy election seasons, require many updates per day,” the NAB said (http://xrl.us/bmmrf3). Instead of immediately adopting political file requirements, the FCC should set up a working group with broadcasters to sort out how the system would be best run and managed, the NAB said. Other broadcasters suggested running a pilot program for allowing online access to stations’ political files before requiring the entire industry to use the FCC’s system.
There’s too much uncertainty about what kinds of documents will need to be scanned and uploaded, how the FCC’s website will be designed and what the capacity of the commission’s servers will be to host all the material, a coalition of state broadcast associations said in comments (http://xrl.us/bmmrfx). “The Commission is not even sure how many ’small business’ television stations will be affected by this new requirement,” they said. If only 1,000 stations were to upload their public inspection files to the commission’s servers, station staff would have to scan and upload an estimated 25 million to 45 million pages of documents, they said. “That process alone would take thousands upon thousands of man-hours ... and those time estimates assume no problems caused by the Commission’s own technical infrastructure.” A pilot program “is an indispensable predicate for the Commission to be able to carry out its statutory obligations under the Paperwork Reduction Act,” it said.
Stations should also have to disclose their arrangements with other local broadcasters on shared services agreements (SSAs), the American Cable Association said (http://xrl.us/bmmrg6). “At the very least, disclosure in the broadcaster’s public inspection file is necessary because today the information needed to evaluate whether broadcasters are in compliance with current media ownership, retransmission consent and antitrust rules are not otherwise readily available,” ACA said. But broadcasters said those agreements contain confidential material and can’t be shared publicly. Including them in the public file would require significant and costly redactions, said Broadcasting Licenses, L.P.; Eagle Creek Broadcasting; Journal Broadcast; JW Broadcasting and four other companies in joint comments (http://xrl.us/bmmrhi). Furthermore, it’s premature to consider requiring stations to put copies of the agreements in their public files, the NAB said. “The question of whether broadcasters should be required to disclose SSAs should be handled in a separate or stand-alone proceeding in which the Commission can properly examine all of the public policy considerations.”