As if stations didn’t already have enough to do during this Presidential election and Olympics season, David Oxenford’s Broadcast Law Blog says the FCC is piling on. It has recently rubber-stamped changes to its requirement that broadcasters obtain certifications from buyers of program time that the sponsors are not foreign governments, or agents of those governments.
Effective Aug. 15, that will also apply to spot advertising time, with the exception of ads for a commercial product or service. That means the FCC’s rule will apply to political issue advertising and paid public service announcements.
“As we will be entering the peak of political advertising time just about the time that this [FCC] order becomes effective, and as so much money is not spent by candidates but instead by PACs and other non-candidate political organizations, this will immediately impose new information gathering requirements from these political buyers — right in the heat of a campaign,” Oxenford says.
What does this mean for broadcasters? “When they are selling political issue ads and paid PSAs, [they] will need to go through the same process as they do when they sell blocks of program time,” Oxenford says. “They will need to get the sponsor of these ads to provide a certification consistent with the certification requirements for all leased programming time, to demonstrate that the buyer is not a foreign government or the agent of a foreign government.”
From the political ad end, the good news is that advertising for candidates was exempted, as, Oxenford explains, “the majority of the Commission determined that rules of other government agencies ensure that no foreign government will be buying time. So, for the purpose of this rule, we don’t have to worry about new information collection requirements for candidate advertising.”
However, the FCC’s decision did not exempt other ads not for commercial products or services, which begs many questions. “Getting a state or federal government agency to certify that they are not the representative of a foreign government does not seem to make any sense,” Oxenford notes. “Nor does getting a certification from some big charity or religious organization promoting some non-profit event. Would non-profit colleges and universities be required to sign these certifications before they buy ads urging people to enroll in a non-profit college? As these issues were not addressed, broadcasters are left wondering what to do.”
That being the case, with the effective date just weeks away, how should stations know what guidelines to follow? “Given the great number of unanswered questions, one would expect that a challenge will be filed,” Oxenford says, “but that challenge may not stop the rule from going into effect, so broadcasters should now be considering how they will deal with this obligation to be ready for the Aug. 15 effective date.”
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