Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The FCC released a Report and Order setting its annual regulatory fees for 2026. The FCC increased TV station fees by approximately 6.2% from last year. The FCC also adopted similar increases in the fees for full-power radio and earth stations (transmit/receive and transmit only) but decreased fees for LPTV, Class A, TV/FM translators, and FM boosters. We expect that early this coming week the FCC will issue a Public Notice announcing the dates for the payment window (which will require payment before the October 1 start of the federal government’s new fiscal year) and that the Media Bureau will release a fee filing guide for the broadcast services.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated the FCC Media Bureau’s March Public Notice extending Lowest Unit Rates (LUR) to joint fundraising committees and political parties where their political ads are authorized by federal candidates (see our Broadcast Law Blog article here). The Court rejected the FCC’s contention that uses of a broadcast station by these groups were the equivalent of a use by a federal candidate, finding that, under both FCC precedent and the federal campaign finance laws, only candidates and their principal campaign committees were entitled to LUR. The Court also rejected a request for a stay of its order filed by the Republican Senatorial and Congressional campaign committees, and it instead ordered that its decision should be effective immediately. The Republican committees have now sought a stay of the 4th Circuit decision, asking the Supreme Court to require that the Public Notice’s requirement that these rates be extended to political parties and joint fundraising committees be reinstated before the start of the September 4 window. For more information about the Court’s decision and its impact on broadcasters, see our Blog article here.
- FCC Commissioner Gomez released posted on X that the Fourth Circuit’s decision was “a victory for transparency, the rule of law and for broadcasters who would’ve been asked to shoulder most of the costs of these dark money ads.”
- The Media Bureau released a Public Notice providing further guidance on applicant eligibility and the points system criteria for evaluating applications filed in the upcoming noncommercial reserved band (88.1-91.9 MHz) FM translator filing window, which will be open between November 4 and 17, 2026 (see our Blog articles here, here, and here). According to the Public Notice, an applicant proposed as the assignee or transferee of an NCE AM or FM station or an LPFM may file in the window if its assignment/transfer application has already been filed and the applicant requests waiver of the filing window’s eligibility and application rules (applications had been limited to applicant’s who are already the licensee of an NCE station or an LPFM). The Bureau also stated that the licensee of a noncommercial FM or LPFM station operating under a time-share arrangement may file in the window, but that any translator it receives can only operate during their primary station’s authorized operating hours. In addition, the Bureau stated that, for an applicant to qualify for 3 points as an established “local” applicant under the points system used to decide between mutually exclusive applications filed in the window, the translator must cover some portion of its proposed community of license with its 60 dBu service contour. And to claim 2 points for diversity of ownership, an applicant must have no overlap between the proposed translator’s 60 dBu service contour and the primary service contour of a commonly owned station (an FM or LPFM station’s 70 dBu service contour or a non-fill-in FM translator’s 60 dBu service contour). The Notice announced that FCC Form 2100 – Schedule 349 is now available in the FCC’s LMS system for applicants to begin drafting their construction permit applications for filing in the November window.
- The FCC released a Small Entity Compliance Guide summarizing the requirements and procedures for the upcoming Auction 114, where the FCC will auction 132 construction permits for new FM stations (see the list of available channels here). The auction was announced in May, and bidding is scheduled to begin on February 2, 2027. Parties interested in participating in the auction must file their FCC Form 175 “short-form” construction permit applications, in which they must specify which of the vacant FM allotments they intend to bid, between 12:00 p.m. ET on September 14, 2026 and 6:00 p.m. ET on September 30, 2026. For more information on this auction, see our Blog articles here and here.
- The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed an appeal of a 2025 decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia which dismissed a lawsuit filed by SGCI Holdings III LLC, the Standard General company that sought to acquire the TEGNA television stations, and its managing member Soohyung Kim, against the FCC, former FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel and former FCC Media Bureau Chief Holly Sauer, broadcast station owner Byron Allen and his company (an allegedly unsuccessful bidder for the TEGNA stations), and a number of other individuals and groups including parties who argued before the FCC against the approval of the transaction. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants conspired to cause the FCC to “pocket veto” the transaction by designating it for hearing for discriminatory reasons because Mr. Kim was not the “right type of minority” (we wrote about the hearing designation here). The Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the District Court on a number of grounds including finding that the plaintiff had not shown evidence of racial discrimination.
- The Media Bureau entered into a Consent Decree with a group of Kentucky radio stations to resolve the Bureau’s investigation into the stations’ violations of FCC rules. The stations admitted that they failed to obtain Special Temporary Authority as required for stations that were silent or operating with reduced power for 30 days, failed to timely upload documents to their Online Public Inspection Files (“OPIF”), and failed to disclose their OPIF violations in their renewals (applicants being required to certify that all documents have been timely uploaded to their public files or provide an explanation as to why they were not). The Bureau also found that the stations filed their renewals one month late. The Consent Decree requires that the stations implement a compliance plan to ensure that future FCC rule violations do not occur but does not require the stations to pay a financial penalty due to their demonstrated inability to pay.
- The Media Bureau released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing the substitution of UHF Channel 14 for VHF Channel 2 at Colusa, California. The TV station proposing the substitution asserts that use of the UHF channel would serve the public interest by improving its viewers’ reception and increasing the population served within the station’s service contour without causing impermissible interference to any other stations.
On our Broadcast Law Blog, we posted our look ahead to the regulatory issues of importance to broadcasters in September and early October. We also published an article that discussed the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s first EEO audit notice for 2026, and the issues all broadcasters should be aware of so that they are prepared for their next EEO review.