As the Federal Communications Commission reviews the broadcast regulatory environment, NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt says this moment calls for “bold ideas.”
In an 80-page filing, the NAB urges the FCC to seize the moment and fundamentally modernize its regulatory framework, beginning with reforms to the national television ownership cap and the local radio and TV ownership rules — reforms that the association says are long overdue.
Chairman Brendan Carr’s “Delete Delete Delete” initiative seeks to help the FCC remove outdated rules, part of a broader push by the Trump administration to review and modernize regulations.
“The FCC’s rules should reflect today’s media landscape, not one from decades past,” LeGeyt said in an NAB summary.
“Our filing lays out a clear, actionable path to modernize regulations and empower local radio and TV stations to better serve their communities.”
The filing is divided into 10 major sections. Specific topics range from EEO, EAS and minimum AM efficiency standards to the broadcast telephone rule, FM content duplication, mandatory paperwork and NextGen TV.
The headliner of the NAB comments is ownership reform, calling on the FCC to modernize rules that were designed for a pre-internet era.
“The commission has consistently failed to modernize, let alone delete, delete, delete, the myriad antiquated and ineffective rules that apply only to the nation’s free, over-the-air broadcasters,” NAB wrote.
Because the commission has jurisdiction over many aspects of broadcasting but not over Big Tech and streaming giants, NAB says the commission has traditionally “donned blinders and addressed nearly every purported communications-related public concern by regulating broadcasters alone.”
There is “no issue riper, or more deserving of, reform than broadcast only structural ownership rules,” NAB writes.
The local radio ownership rules have been frozen for nearly 30 years, NAB says, and still “impose the identical numerical caps on common ownership of radio stations overall, as well as the same subcaps on common ownership of AM and FM stations specifically as in 1996.”
It continued: “It does not even pass the laugh test to assert that competitive conditions remain the same — and thus the radio caps should remain the same — as they were before broadband, smartphones and speakers, satellite radio, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google and Facebook.”
The NAB asks the commission to delete local radio ownership subcaps in all markets and its rules constraining radio ownership in Nielsen Audio markets outside the top 75 markets and in all unrated markets.
It also asks the FCC to delete all restrictions on AM ownership, eliminate the Biennial Ownership Report Requirement and issue a notice of proposed rulemaking and expeditiously conclude its 2022 quadrennial review.
The NAB says quickly removing outdated ownership rules should be the top priority, but the remainder of its outmoded broadcast regulatory regime also need “significant pruning,” including the recent orders on foreign-sponsored content regulation and the resurrection of the decades old Equal Employment Opportunity form.
It also cited recent attempts by the FCC to regulate artificial intelligence used in political announcements on broadcast TV and radio at a time when it says misleading content is almost exclusively on social media.
The EEO rule are also “ripe for reexamination” under the Delete Delete Delete inititive, NAB says. “Substantial reduction of the EEO rule also is consistent with recent Presidential Executive Orders (EOs) rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs,” NAB wrote.
Particularly burdensome are EEO audits, especially for smaller stations, NAB says. “EEO is the only rule NAB can identify that the FCC randomly audits for compliance,” it said. Thus it is asking the FCC to eliminate the EEO audit process.
The group also has specific recommendations regarding the online public inspection file requirements for broadcasters. Except for those portions relating to the political file, which are statutorily required, NAB suggests the commission should delete all portions of the public file requirements that require broadcasters to upload documents to the online public file online.
“Those documents that the commission has in its possession, such as FCC authorizations, applications and related materials, contour maps and other documents, may be uploaded by the commission, but broadcasters should not be required to ensure such documents are uploaded,” the NAB wrote.
Regarding the political file, NAB asks the commission to extend the deadline for uploading documents to the political file from 24 hours to 72 hours. Such an approach, NAB says, will help alleviate the burdens on broadcasters of rapidly uploading these files — burdens that crescendo dramatically as elections approach.
The NAB is also asking the FCC to delete compliance obligations that it says have become obsolete either because the marketplace has changed, experience has demonstrated the inefficacy of the rules, or other statutes are duplicative or better serve the public.
“The EEO rules, Children’s Programming Rules, rules requiring consent for airing telephone interviews, rules setting minimum AM efficiency standards, rules requiring broadcasters to post contest terms, the rule prohibiting stations from duplicating a certain amount of FM radio content in the same market, and certain accessibility rules all create compliance obligations that have been found unjustifiably burdensome,” the group says.
The radio duplication rule prohibits commercial radio stations from devoting more than 25 percent of their average total broadcast hours per week to programs that duplicate the programming of any commonly owned station in the same service (AM or FM) if the principal community contours of the stations overlap by more than 50 percent.
In addition, the NAB asks the FCC to eliminate minimum efficiency standards that hamper AM stations from choosing antennas and locations that would optimize reach and lower station costs.
“With technological improvements, other AM antenna designs have emerged that are not as large and provide sufficient coverage; unfortunately, these new designs do not meet these Minimum Efficiency Standards. Minimum Efficiency Standards also may create a barrier to entry for AM stations,” NAB states.
The NAB again urged the FCC to allow broadcasters and EAS participants to use a software-based alerting solution, which would mean ending the requirement for stations to use a physical device to carry out EAS functions. It is also asking the commission to end certain pending EAS and security-related inquiries.
The NAB suggests the FCC to terminate its inquiry into whether all broadcasters should be required to file reports in DIRS and NORS during a disaster, and end consideration of an FCC proposal to require EAS participants to provide multilingual alerts, something the NAB says was well-intentioned, “but under-developed and left open too many questions about how it would work, or could work, in practice.”
Near the end of its filing, the NAB addresses the need for the FCC to cease enforcement of informal policies or procedures that impose standardless overregulation of broadcasters, saying the commission should formally purge itself of its news distortion policy.
The FCC’s policy provides the commission narrow authority “to take action on complaints about the accuracy or bias of news networks, stations, reporters or commentators” in their coverage of events if they meet certain evidentiary standards, NAB says.
As NAB recently argued in another proceeding, the “news distortion policy does not pass legal and constitutional muster.”
The FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr has opened several investigations into news reporting by radio and TV broadcasters to look for evidence of news distortion.
Comments in GN Docket 25-133 can be viewed online. Reply comments are due by April 28.
