NAB Blasts FCC For Proposed Fee Increase

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In comments submitted to The FCC Monday, regarding a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to raise regulatory fees on broadcasters, the NAB says The Commission has failed to explain how and why they are raising those fees.

The NAB says the Commission has failed to explain its rationale as to how its methodology for determining regulatory fees is grounded in Congress’s directive to determine such fees by the benefits received by the proposed payors. “This abject failure is compounded as the Commission proposes increasing fees on radio broadcasters not only where the Commission’s overall budget remains flat; but also, where broadcasters are facing unprecedented harm to their operations as a result of the current pandemic.”

The NAB says the Commission should not proceed with its proposed regulatory fee increases, “when those fee increases could jeopardize the ability of struggling broadcasters to stay on the air, and when the Commission’s approach violates the law by not properly explaining the basis for the increases nor tying them to any discernible increase in the work performed on behalf of broadcasters or the benefits received by broadcasters as a result of the Commission’s efforts.”

Read the comments the NAB filed HERE

4 COMMENTS

  1. Dear NAB:

    Better yet, get these damn regulatory fees ABOLISHED forever, and impress us all. I would still like to slap the taste out of Bill Clinton’s mouth for this affront to America’s broadcasters. Nothing more than taxation without representation. Plus fees for this, that, and every other thing else your are required to file, all while undermining our interest for the cellular carriers, stealing C band, etc. Time to ABOLISH REGULATORY FEES!

  2. As the manager of an LPFM radio station, I will be more than glad to pay the fees for all of the remaining stations in their cluster if they would but sell me their worst FM (or AM/translator) facility. Oh, you poor over taxed dears!

    • Before being given the keys, so to speak, to a full-power station, you first have to play by the rules. Saga has called your bluff on that; you need to deal with that problem, first.

  3. Without getting too deep into the weeds of government operations financing, that is why many of us support ‘zero-based budgeting’.

    With zero-based budgeting, every government department and agency is required to start a new fiscal year at an amount of zero dollars, and must justify and illustrate its specific funding needs for the coming year before any funds are allocated to it. Instead, we now have a budgeting system that, in nearly all cases, increases automatically, every year. This latter system is what causes an agency like the FCC to ask for a budget increase, year after year, whether it truly needs additional money or not…the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ that we always hear about. But, it is Congress that appropriates our hard-earned tax dollars to fund agencies like the FCC, so it’s not just the agencies that are at fault here. The whole system is rotten.

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