Commercial Station Ownership Reporting Window Opens Oct 1st

Commercial broadcast stations may begin filing biennial ownership reports on October 1, 2015, and have until December 2, 2015 to complete all report filings. Information in the reports must be current as of at least October 1, 2015 (i.e., not earlier than that date).

The FCC conducted a commercial station ownership report filing demonstration on September 22, 2015, and it is available for public viewing here. It goes into excruciating detail about the form and even covers certain quizzical behavior of the CDBS filing system software. We give them an “A” for thoroughness, but a failing grade for not providing access to headache medicine (though that might have involved another filing).

The information on broadcast station ownership reports is gathered and categorized by the FCC to measure ownership diversity as well as other ownership indicia. In time, we anticipate the FCC using that collected data to make policy decisions in the broadcast ownership arena. The FCC has acknowledged that some of the data includes or suggests errors in reporting, and their educational efforts on the filing process and form are aimed at eliminating such errors as much as possible.