The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition (the “Coalition”) respectfully submits the following comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission Order on Reconsideration and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The Coalition supports the Commission decision to move forward with this important proceeding and for the commitment to bring broadcast disclosure in to the 21st century by creating an integrated public file to be hosted online by the Commission. The public has waited far too long to access broadcast public files in a manner that reflects the technological realities of the 21st century. We commend the Commission for taking on the increased burden and responsibility for hosting such files itself, thereby maximizing access to information while easing the overall burden on the public and all other stakeholders.
The broadcast licensing system is rooted in a form of social contract established by Congress and enforced by the FCC. In return for their exclusive use of the publicly owned spectrum, broadcasters must operate and program their stations in the public interest. The public file contains critical information about broadcaster service to communities and compliance with FCC rules. The Commission does not routinely monitor every aspect of stations’ compliance with those rules. Instead it depends on viewers and listeners to provide information about whether stations are meeting their public interest obligations and abiding by FCC rules and policies. Accordingly, access to public file information promotes meaningful public participation in the broadcast licensing process, and assists in the enforcement of FCC policies and regulations.
The public file is critical to ensuring that the broadcast system functions in a manner consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity. Yet for too long, access to the public file has been anything but convenient for the public. Despite the importance of this information, members of the public currently face unnecessary and unjustified obstacles when accessing the public file. For many years, the most reasonable place to provide the public with access to a station’s public file was the station itself. But given the prevalence of electronic data processing tools, and more importantly, the rise of the internet, this is no longer the case. The FCC’s current public file rules must be updated to reflect technological developments that can help to minimize public file burdens on the both the public and on broadcasters. By putting the public file online, the FCC can remove unnecessary impediments that currently hinder or dissuade interested parties from viewing broadcast public files. It also likely would reduce many of the licensee burdens associated with maintenance of paper files, as well as staff time dedicated to updating and supervising onsite public access to the file.
The online public file should contain documents and data that will help the public more effectively assess broadcasters’ service to the community and compliance with FCC rules and policies. To that end, the online public file should include major components of the existing public file, including the political file, as well as records of sponsorship arrangements and broadcast resource sharing agreements.
The Political File
We urge the Commission to require broadcasters to post their political file online. Online access to this information will better enable the public, journalists, researchers, and watchdog groups to reveal the true interests behind the purchases of advertising time, as well as track how often, to whom, and on what terms broadcasters have offered use of the public's airwaves for political purposes. Moreover, placing this information online will reduce the burden on broadcasters who often receive multiple requests each day for in-person access to this information during the election season.
Sponsorship Identification Information
The FCC should require licensees to submit a record of “pay for play” arrangements for inclusion in their online public files. Specifically, when a broadcaster airs programming that would require an on-air disclosure under the FCC sponsorship identification rules, the licensee should also post that information in the online public file for a period of five years following the air-date of the content in question. This increased disclosure will help to address the many shortcomings of fleeting, on-air disclosures. Online records of these arrangements will afford viewers the opportunity to view sponsorship information that they may miss during the live airing of a program. Additionally, the information will be useful for academics and watchdog groups who aggregate this information in order to track the prevalence of payola in the market. Nor would the requirements be unduly burdensome for broadcasters. Broadcasters must already collect and disclose sponsorship identification information to comply with current rules, and the posting the records in the online public file would not be onerous.
Sharing Arrangements
The Commission currently requires commercial television stations to put copies of time brokerage agreements and joint sales agreements in their public inspection files. It is critical that these arrangements continue to be part of the online public file. Additionally, because some stations are increasingly outsourcing their news production, engaging in other forms of joint news production, and combining stations resources and activities, we urge the Commission to require broadcasters to submit shared services, joint resource, joint operation and news sharing agreements for their online public files. Unless such agreements are available online, it is exceedingly difficult for members of the public, or the Commission, to learn about agreements affecting control of the station and production of local news and other programming, and whether such agreements are being used to circumvent the FCC media ownership rules.
Issues/Programs Lists
As the Coalition has observed in previous filings, the current issues/programs lists suffer from several deficiencies. Consequently, the FCC has opened a separate proceeding to replace the current requirement with an improved and standardized reporting mechanism. The Coalition supports the Commission’s efforts to improve and standardize how broadcasters report on programming that serves their communities of license and has submitted a proposal and sample form to meet this goal. However, in the interim, issues/programs lists remain the only way that broadcasters disclose whether and how they are providing community responsive programming. Thus, broadcasters should be obligated to post online their issues/programs lists required under current rules, until the Commission replaces such lists with a new standardized form.
Finally, online public file information ultimately should be made available in a structured or database-friendly format that can be aggregated, manipulated, and more easily analyzed. The FCC can accelerate the implementation of an advanced database by requiring all documents created after the rules are adopted in this proceeding to be filed in a standardized, searchable format. In the interim, if broadcasters maintain current file documents in a searchable format (such as Word, .Txt, PDF or .odf), the Commission should require them to submit those documents in their native form. To the extent that a broadcaster currently maintains an existing record only in a non-searchable format, we urge the Commission to digitize such documents and perform optical character recognition so that the Commission can make them part of the advanced database.
In conclusion, the Commission should move expeditiously in adopting and implementing public file modernization policies that will increase the accessibility and usability of information that broadcasters are required to make available in their public files. The Commission cannot afford to delay these measures further. Neither can the public.
