Carriers, MVPDs Tangle With Broadcasters Over Reg Fees
MVPD and telecom groups don’t agree with broadcasters on the practicality of revamping the FCC’s regulatory fee system, said reply comments filed in docket 22-301. NAB, a group of 57 smaller broadcasters and nearly all state broadcast associations filed replies in support of proposals from NAB and the Satellite Industry Association to rethink how the FCC parcels out the fees, but the Wireless ISP Association, NCTA and CTIA panned the idea. “The proposals of NAB and SIA are self-serving, impracticable, and would be unmanageable,” said NCTA.
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NAB and SIA have suggested the FCC reassess how it determines which full-time equivalents are classified as “indirect.” Indirect FTEs are included in the calculations of regulatory fees for all FCC regulatory fee payors, while other FTEs are included in the calculation of fees only for their particular bureau’s licensees. The FCC “should no longer delay doing the work necessary to ensure that its fee methodology more fairly and accurately accounts for the benefits provided to” reg fee payors “regardless of where those FTEs are located,” said NAB’s reply comments. “If 85 FTEs in the Media Bureau are in fact working on broadband -- not broadcast -- issues, the costs for those FTEs should be covered by the non-broadcast regulatees who are benefiting from that work,” said the joint filing from the small broadcasters, including Golden Isles Broadcasting, Alabama Media and Hancock Communications.
It would be “extremely difficult” for the FCC to calculate more nuanced FTE allocations “because indirect FTEs in non-core bureaus and offices typically handle a wide range of issues, and these issues routinely relate to matters that do not clearly correlate with one core bureau or specific category of regulatee,” said CTIA. Congress didn't “require the Commission to analyze every task and work hour of each FTE.” The proposals from NAB and SIA “would result in an exhaustively complicated allocation methodology under which regulatory fees would be unpredictable and fluctuate greatly from year to year,” said NCTA. “Analyzing individual workloads would require substantial time and effort ongoing throughout the year, and would require implementation of complex timekeeping systems.”
The FCC already performs granular assessments of FTE allocation when it calculates how many FTEs are being used for work on auctions and thus excluded from regulatory fee totals, NAB said. The FCC “has plenty of experience with disaggregating FTEs in the Commission’s bureaus and offices,” NAB said. “The Commission’s administrability goals cannot supersede its statutory mandate or the need for a fair and sustainable fee structure.” A review of the agency’s FTE allocations “need not be unduly burdensome,” said the state broadcast associations. “Even a periodic, cursory analysis would likely identify FTEs in non-core bureaus and offices whose functions primarily focus on certain categories of fee payors,” the state associations said.
That approach would lead to “true mayhem,” said NCTA. “Every payor would begin an examination of which divisions had affected them in the past year, and argue for their fees to be based only on the special combination of FTEs that they believed appropriate,” NCTA said. “Rather than standard groups of payors, the Commission would have to create numerous sub-groups to reflect different combinations of FTEs “
The agency should also reject broadcaster calls to create new categories of regulatory fees on broadband internet providers, said WISPA. The FCC “correctly determined that there is no statutory basis or public interest reason” to do so, WISPA said. It also disputed broadcaster claims they don’t benefit from FCC work on broadband. Broadcasters collect increasing revenue from online ads, and a selling point for the ATSC 3.0 transition is the additional services it allows broadcasters to offer users with broadband connections, WISPA said.
If the FCC doesn’t take up broadcaster proposals to reclassify FTEs in the agency’s non-core bureaus, it should change classification of FTEs connected with the universal service fund in the Wireline Bureau, NAB said. The recent reg fee order that kept the classification of those FTEs as indirect but exempted some media licensees from some of the costs failed “to correct the harm imposed on broadcasters,” said the state associations. The FCC’s current “binary” approach to FTE allocation “is a remnant of an obsolete organizational structure from when the Commission might have more easily been able to silo regulation of various industries within specific bureaus.”