The Federal Register managed to get the text of an FCC proceeding called Standardizing Program Reporting Requirements for Broadcast Licensees (MD Docket No. 11-189) on 12/15/11 – just in time to make sure many interested parties would be unable to adequately prepare comments due to the holiday season, among other things. The FCC has agreed that the original 1/17/12 comment deadline is a bit premature.
A group the FCC is calling the Named State Broadcasters Associations cited the holiday season, and the coincidence of this proceeding with the closely related proceeding on the institution of an online public file, and asked that the deadline for initial comments be changed to 2/7/12, with the deadline for reply comments following at 2/21/12.
The Radio Television Digital News Association echoed the NSBA reasoning, and added that it has undergone changes at the top of its management roster, and asked for the same new deadlines.
These requests were opposed by the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition, which argued that the organizations had ample time to deal with this issue and said that there should be no change, and if there is any extension, it should be at most an extra week, and apply only to the reply comment deadline, which was originally 1/30/12
The FCC said it would grant the NSBA and RTDNA requests in part, allowing a 10-day extension on both ends of the comment cycle.
The new deadlines are 1/27/12 for comments and 2/9/12 for reply comments.
