Public Files Going to the Cloud, Under FCC Draft Order
Papers that TV stations must electronically give the FCC will go in the cloud. The public-inspection files all TV broadcasters must under a draft order soon start giving the commission, so they can be found on fcc.gov and not just in stations’ main studios, will be uploaded to a cloud system, agency and industry officials said. They said the draft Media Bureau order tentatively set for a vote at April 27’s commissioner meeting (CD April 9 p5) says such a cloud mechanism is meant to allow speedy uploading of documents during peak times, such as shortly before elections when campaign ads often sell for the lowest unit charge and must be recorded in broadcasters’ political files.
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A cloud-based system could eliminate or cut waits as broadcasters try to give paperwork to the FCC on the price and number of spots sold to campaigns under the best terms offered any advertiser, commission officials said. Form 323 for stations to report ownership information, for example, had lengthy wait times as many licensees simultaneously tried to file data around deadlines, FCC and industry officials said. They noted that information didn’t always upload properly. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
The electronic public-file system means TV stations won’t need to keep copies in paper or electronic form for most documents they give the agency, which will be responsible for keeping duplicates, FCC and industry officials said. They said the one exception is keeping the political file, since the commission only will be given new entries into it and not existing ones under the draft order. Over time, all new materials in political files would need to be given to the FCC, its officials said. They said there’s also a phase-in period for when materials in other parts of the public file must be uploaded to the commission. A trigger for many of the periods is when the commission publishes in the Federal Register a notification that the Office of Management and Budget authorizes the paperwork-gathering requirements of the rule, FCC officials said.
TV licensees can give the FCC public-file paperwork in any electronic format, including scanned documents using optical character recognition, agency officials said. That was expected (CD March 28 p5). The draft order says searchability is still a goal, commission officials said. The online database may have some drop-and-drag functionality, an FCC official said. Commission officials said the draft asks but doesn’t require stations to provide the materials to the commission in their native format: Instead of scanning a document written, for instance, in Microsoft Word, it would be uploaded as a Word electronic file to fcc.gov. Stations would need to publicize the existence of the online public file and a URL for it at least three times a week, including at least once between 6 p.m. and midnight, commission and industry officials said.
Thirty days after the order’s effective, every station must put new information online from all of its public files except for the correspondence portion, excluded as the commission proposed in October, and for smaller stations the political file, FCC officials said. They said ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in the top-50 U.S. markets must also, 30 days after the order’s effective, put new data from political files online. All other TV stations starting July 2014 must put new political file information on fcc.gov, a commission official said. Six months after the rules take effect, all existing parts of the public file other than the correspondence file and for small stations the political file must go online, agency officials said.
Many TV stations already post files online, said four nonprofits seeking broadcaster disclosure. Twenty-eight of the 30 TV-station websites checked by the New America Foundation put PDFs on their websites of equal employment opportunity materials, the group said (http://xrl.us/bm3bg2). “In total 29 of them were using pdfs and some are scanned copies of printed materials.” And of 60 stations New America checked, five had no PDFs, said fellow Tom Glaisyer of the group’s Open Technology Initiative. The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition, whose members also include Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation, used that data in a meeting Wednesday with Chief Bill Lake and others in the bureau’s front office to lobby for a rule requiring such uploading. “This finding supports the FCC proposal that broadcasters as a whole are quite familiar with creating scanned copies of their files and uploading them to an FCC website,” said a filing posted Monday to docket 00-168 (http://xrl.us/bm3bhe). “We urged the FCC to view with extreme skepticism broadcaster claims to the contrary."
The commission should “move expeditiously” to put online information on the types of local information TV stations air by replacing current individualized issues/programs lists with “a more streamlined and uniform reporting requirement,” an official at coalition member Free Press reported (http://xrl.us/bm3bid) telling an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The filing said the commission should make good on an October rulemaking notice’s proposal to include “resource” sharing agreements between separately owned stations in a market and records about on-air promotions in public files. The draft order says the quadrennial media ownership review or another rulemaking in the online public-file proceeding may address whether deals such as shared services agreements should be included in the files, FCC officials said.