Widespread Interest in Adopting Fundraising Policy for NCEs Remains To Be Seen
A draft FCC rulemaking that will soon be approved by commissioners will look at whether noncommercial broadcasters should be allowed to devote some on-air time to raise funds for other non-profit organizations, agency officials said. But industry executives said it’s unclear how willing stations are to interrupt programming for third-party organizations. The proposal was suggested by the National Religious Broadcasters and was included in the commission’s report this summer on the information needs of communities (http://xrl.us/bkq83f). The commission is tentatively scheduled to vote on the notice of proposed rulemaking (CD April 9 p5) at next Friday’s meeting.
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Such fundraising could improve relationships between noncommercial broadcasters and local charities, said Craig Parshall, NRB’s general counsel. A new rule would allow stations to forgo the current process of requesting a waiver to raise funds on-air for third parties, which many stations took advantage of to raise money for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and of Hurricane Katrina, he said. Obtaining a waiver can be a “near impossible task,” he said. In its petition to the FCC in 2010 (http://xrl.us/bm4idn), NRB suggested the commission grant permission to noncommercial educational stations “to alter or suspend up to 1 percent of its annual broadcasting time for the purpose of raising funds for third-party, non-profit organizations.” Currently, NCE stations cannot schedule announcements and acknowledgments that interrupt regular programming, according to licensing requirements administered by the FCC.
Approval of the NPRM would help NRB members and other stations develop closer working relationships with charities and “join efforts to address specific local needs,” Parshall said. “The problem is we're hamstrung by some regulations that make it difficult.” The commission has been concerned about whether broadcasters are meeting local needs, he said. “Here’s a great way to do that."
Some public broadcasting professionals and attorneys don’t detect a great interest among stations in pushing the proposal. “We've never heard from any of our members about an interest in being able to do this or a need for a change in the regulations as allowing them to do this,” said Lonna Thompson, executive vice president of the Association of Public TV Stations. Obtaining blanket waivers to assist charities isn’t something that was done by APTS members on a daily basis, she said.
It may be a very narrow proposal, said John Crigler, a Garvey Schubert broadcast attorney. During a panel about the FCC’s information needs report, “there wasn’t a lot of support among regular, secular media types for changing the existing rule, so I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of enthusiasm for it among public media types,” he said. Traditional public broadcasters may not be too concerned about the proposal, said broadcast lawyer Todd Gray of Dow Lohnes. They can request waivers for appropriate circumstances and the commission turns them around in a matter of hours, he said. The greatest part of funding comes from membership contributions, Gray said: Public broadcasters probably won’t think it’s a good idea to take away fundraising time for their own needs “by engaging in fundraising to support other organizations."
Choosing an organization to support could present a dilemma for stations, Thompson said. “There are many, many charities and they'd all love to have fundraising on their behalf.” Determining which ones to raise funds for “could put our stations in awkward positions,” she said. The rule change should be reasonable and minimal, Parshall said. “We don’t think it would create a major bureaucratic effort to police this.”