Sections 25.701, Other DBS Public Interest Obligations, and 25.702, Other SDARS Public Interest Obligations

In 2012, the Commission replaced the decades-old requirement that commercial and noncommercial television stations maintain public files at their main studios with a requirement to post most of the documents in those files to a central, online public file hosted by the Commission. On January 28, 2016, the Commission adopted a Report and Order (“R&O”) in MB Docket No. 14-127, FCC 16-4, In the Matter of Expansion of Online Public File Obligations to Cable and Satellite TV Operators and Broadcast and Satellite Radio Licensees, expanding the requirement that public inspection files be posted to the FCC- hosted online public file database to satellite TV (also referred to as “Direct Broadcast Satellite” or “DBS”) providers and to satellite radio (also referred to as “satellite Digital Audio Radio Services” or “SDARS”) licensees, among other entities. The Commission stated that its goal is to make information that these entities are already required to make publicly available more accessible while also reducing costs both for the government and the public sector. The Commission took the same general approach to transitioning these entities to the online file that it took with television broadcasters in 2012, tailoring the requirements as necessary to the different services. The Commission also took similar measures to minimize the effort and cost entities must undertake to move their public files online. Specifically, the Commission required entities only to upload to the online public file documents that are not already on file with the Commission or that the Commission maintains in its own database. The Commission also exempted existing political file material from the online file requirement and required that political file documents be uploaded only on a going-forward basis.

The latest form for Sections 25.701, Other DBS Public Interest Obligations, and 25.702, Other SDARS Public Interest Obligations expires 2022-02-28 and can be found here.