FCC Tells Radio Stations Not to Make Fee Payments Yet – Radio World

After problem with population calculation, the commission asked radio broadcasters to wait

Radio stations in the United States should not pay their 2024 FCC regulatory fees just yet.

Days after opening its Commission Registration System (CORES) database for broadcasters to make their annual regulatory fee payments, the Federal Communications Commission is now asking radio stations to wait for a few days.

A notice posted on CORES on Friday states: “The FCC is continuing to do its due diligence to reevaluate the population count information for AM and FM broadcasters for FY 2024 regulatory fees. We expect to have this situation resolved early next week. In the meantime, we request that AM and FM broadcasters do not make any payments in CORES. Thank you for your patience.”

A similar message appears on an FCC Media Services page where broadcasters can get information about their fee obligations.

In response to a query from Radio World, the National Association of Broadcasters provided this update:

“NAB recently learned that the FCC erred in its calculation of the population served by radio broadcasters, resulting in many broadcasters being placed incorrectly in a larger population tier and charged a higher fee,” said Senior Vice President of Communications Alex Siciliano.

“At NAB’s urging, the FCC has paused radio fee payments while the FCC resolves this issue. The FCC has placed a notice on fccfees.com that radio fee information has been taken down while the FCC addresses the issue and has also placed a notice on CORES that radio broadcasters should not make payments at this time. The FCC expects to resolve the issue by early next week. We remain in close contact with FCC staff and will keep you updated.”

A Friday email to the FCC seeking more information was not immediately returned.

Confusion

We’d reported earlier this week that the CORES system was showing higher fees for some radio users rather than the lower ones expected after the 2024 fee schedule was published. The FCC subsequently told Radio World that the problem had been due to a data download issue and that it had been resolved.

But several users told us on Friday that problems were continuing. Also on Friday the Michigan Association of Broadcasters alerted its members: “Don’t pay those FCC regulatory fees yet! The MAB has learned that the FCC may have miscalculated the population of many radio stations in determining the fee category in which they belong. This seems to have resulted in many stations having fees that went up (in many cases substantially) when they were supposed to go down.”

Some observers wondered if fee calculations perhaps had crept up due to a change in the population data used by the FCC; but the commission actually began using the 2020 census data last year, according to public records, so that apparently is not the case.

The situation over the past three days baffled some broadcasters and left others feeling cynical.

One told RW earlier this week that his fees for three radio stations apparently would going up from $5,415 to $7,570, and he suspected bureaucratic shenanigans. “The stories are out there on how the magnanimous FCC has reduced the regulatory fees for 2024. They lie,” the broadcaster wrote in an email.

(The same broadcaster wrote this to us today after hearing about the update: “You’ve noticed that today is Friday the 13th?”)

The deadline for paying annual fees for FY2024 is Sept. 26. The regulatory fees will fund the FCC’s proposed $390.2 million budget.

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