
Under the FCC’s rules, radio and TV stations are required to upload an issues/programs list into their online public file on a quarterly basis. The next Quarterly Issues/Programs List (“Quarterly List”) must be placed in stations’ Public Inspection Files by July 10, 2024, reflecting information for the months of April, May, and June 2024. The Washington DC law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, described the obligation as follows.
Content of the Quarterly List: The FCC requires each broadcast station to air a reasonable amount of programming responsive to significant community needs, issues, and problems as determined by the station. The FCC gives each station the discretion to determine which issues facing the community served by the station are the most significant and how best to respond to them in the station’s overall programming. To demonstrate a station’s compliance with this public interest obligation, the FCC requires the station to maintain and place in the Public Inspection File a Quarterly List reflecting the “station’s most significant programming treatment of community issues during the preceding three-month period.” By its use of the term “most significant,” the FCC has noted that stations are not required to list all responsive programming, but only that programming which provided the most significant treatment of the issues identified.
DO NOT BE LATE UPLOADING THIS LIST. The FCC is keeping close tabs on when these lists are filed.
You can access a complete discussion of the Quarterly Issues Programs obligation by the Washington, DC, law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP here.