WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission has unanimously voted to propose eliminating rules requiring the posting of broadcast licenses, as well as ownership and contact information, in specific physical locations.
That is because the rules date back most of a hundred years — they were adopted in 1930 — and almost all the info is now available online.
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said he had seen such information literally taped to the walls on a recent visit to broadcast facilities at One World Trade Center in New York and had the picture to prove it.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai pointed out that no rationale was ever laid out for these posting rules in the first place.
The chairman also said the FCC had to take a fine tooth comb on the rulebook to find all the related rules and thanked the staff for wielding those combs.
It is the 10th dereg item in the chairman’s regulatory modernization efforts, not to be confused with major deregulatory weed-whacking like net neutrality and broadcast ownership reg rollbacks.
