Thursday, we then learned of the 13 procedures related to radio and TV the three FCC commissioners will vote on at its open meeting on March 26. Read that updated story here.
As part of the FCC’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” deregulation initiative, the commission will vote to update several broadcast regulations this month.
Chairman Brendan Carr, in a Wednesday blog post coinciding with National Consumer Protection Week, said the commission will vote on an order to remove outdated procedures and codify current Media Bureau practices so that “licensing is clearer and more efficient.”
For radio, Carr pointed to “unnecessary” requirements for routine AM station facility modifications, for the definition of “authorized stations” to include both licensed stations and construction permits and a rule consolidation for petitions to deny license renewal applications.
December 2024 NPRM
Details have not been released as of this writing of what the chairman was specifically referring to as far as the procedures the commission seeks to remove.
But in a notice of proposed rulemaking issued by former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in December 2024, the FCC noted that the term “authorized” was never formally defined in the rules setting out the minimum distance separation requirements for new and modified Low Power FM applications. To be approved, LPFM applicants must satisfy minimum distance separation requirements to protect authorized FM and LPFM stations, as well as authorized FM translator stations.
The commission’s unwritten interpretation has always been that this encompasses stations holding a granted license and/or a CP. However, the lack of a codified definition, it wrote, “may have the unintended effect of causing confusion in the LPFM application process.”
The NPRM also had specific language on the “petitions to deny” — formal objections filed against a station’s license renewal. Previously, the commission said that the deadlines and procedures for these petitions were “awkwardly split” across different sections of the FCC’s regulations. The proposal in the NPRM would consolidate those rules under a single section.
The notice from December 2024 also proposed removing the 20% minimum power increase for AM stations, a rule that was originally adopted in 1985.
We’ll find out Thursday morning, when the public draft of the report and order ahead of open meeting is released, on what orders will be up for vote.
Carr added that the commission will also vote on an order that builds on previous efforts to streamline copper wire retirement, freeing up capital to invest in all-IP networks.
“We’re moving forward with an agenda that puts American consumers first — improving service, protecting public dollars and modernizing the rules that stand in the way of progress,” Carr wrote in his blog post.
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