FCC Could Base Public-File Leeway on KTBS Waiver Request
The waiver request that’s believed to be the basis for a draft order on public files that the FCC Media Bureau staff have been working on is for KTBS-TV Shreveport, La., said industry and agency officials. The request seeks forbearance so TV stations need not post in their online public files materials from past license renewal cycles. The draft hasn’t circulated for a vote or been approved on delegated authority, industry and agency officials said. Some industry lawyers said work on the draft appeared finished or nearly finished, but approval was held up.
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Any forthcoming order may relieve TV stations from having to post materials from older, eight-year-long license cycles when past renewals haven’t been granted often because of indecency complaints (CD Jan 23 p2). That would mean documents eight or more years old wouldn’t need to go online starting Feb. 4, when most existing paperwork now at TV stations, except for that on political ads and some other types of exempted material, must be uploaded to the commission’s website. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in the top-50 markets must have already begun posting political files online, while other stations have until next year.
The bureau has seemed to have been working on relief for a class of outlets in the same situation as KTBS “that would have broader applicability than just KTBS,” said broadcast lawyer Frank Jazzo of Fletcher Heald, which is representing the outlet. That’s even though the ABC affiliate’s request didn’t seek an industrywide waiver for all other TV stations in the same position as the broadcaster, he said. NAB had also been speaking with bureau officials about an across-the-board waiver, industry officials have said. The Dec. 6 request by KTBS sought a partial waiver so it doesn’t have to include, in the online public-inspection file, issues/programming reports for June 1, 1997, to May 31, 2005. The station’s “currently pending KTBS license renewal application” had sought a renewal for the eight-year period to June 1, 2013, the request said. “Action on that application has been deferred, at the request of the Enforcement Bureau."
KTBS’s “entire” public file, including quarterly lists of programs addressing local issues, “has been available for viewing by members of the public throughout not only the current” license term, “but has been continuously available for the period June 1, 1997 to the present,” Fletcher Heald lawyer James Riley wrote in the letter to the FCC. “With that opportunity for extended scrutiny, the Commission’s records show that no objection has been filed to a grant of the pending 2005 license renewal application.” The eight-years of issues/program lists from the past renewal cycle KTBS wants exempt from posting online “are on paper and will continue to be available for viewing in the local public inspection files maintained by KTBS at its main studios,” the request said. “Each page” of the thousands from that list in the physical file for 1997-2005 must be scanned before being uploaded, the waiver request said. “It would take well over a month of full-time work by a KTBS staff member” to describe shows airing between eight and 16 years ago, the station said.