Effective June 29, 2017—Public File Requirement for Letters/Emails from the Public Eliminated

At long last, the Federal Communications Commission has set an effective date for its rule change (adopted in January 2017) that eliminated the requirement that commercial TV and radio stations retain in their public files copies of letters and emails from the public. Non-commercial educational broadcasters were not required to retain this information. Thus, effective June 29, 2017, TV and radio stations may remove this material from their paper public files. Stations are still required to disclose on their license renewal applications comments received from the public relating to violent programming. These comments should now be kept in a station’s business files.