Ownership Reports Are Due

By Public Notice, the FCC has announced the opening of the 92-day filing window in which all commercial and noncommercial AM, FM, TV, Class A and LPTV stations, as well as entities with attributable interests in such stations, must file biennial ownership reports. These reports must be electronically filed in LMS. The notice touts the new ability for filers to certify that there has been no change to a prior report, and for any new report that must be filed, to pre-load the prior report so that data input is not so time-consuming. There’s even a new search function in LMS to help filers find their prior reports. So nice.

All reported ownership information must be current as of October 1, 2019. In case you ever wondered what would happen to a station if it did not file a required biennial report or certification of no change, the short answer is nothing – in the short term. But when a station would later file for license renewal, it would have to disclose the failure to file and thus the absence of a required public file item. Either or both would likely result in fines.