FCC Regulatory Fee Glitches Raise Questions

For commercial stations, the September 26 regulatory fee deadline has passed, with any late fees having the privilege of paying a 25% penalty.  The FCC’s order adoption process was later than normal, and all of the systems came on line several days later, but with data errors.  Once those were reported to the FCC, the staff actually took the unprecedented step of suspending the payment systems to correct geographic contour data before announcing that payments could resume.

Even then, despite per-station fees being corrected, some stations were improperly labeled within the regulatory fee system.  Other residual issues remained and required one-by-one corrections, especially with stations being shown as “feeable” when in fact they should have been exempt. Despite the confusion, the FCC maintained the originally announced payment deadline.

While we’ve certainly seen some of the minor regulatory fee issues in prior years, the data glitches and start/stop/start approach raise questions as to the FCC’s internal processes.  We hope that their after-action review leads to improvements so that every regulatory fee procedure, from order adoption through payment, can be improved.

If stations that paid regulatory fees before the FCC corrected the contour data are concerned about potential overpayment, the number to call is 877-480-3201. The FCC did announce that they were reviewing those early payments and reaching out if they detected a problem.