WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission fiscal year 2026 regulatory fee allocations, the NAB said it generally supports the Commission’s proposed allocations and the agency’s use of population-based methodology for assessing broadcast television fees.

The NAB also applauded the agency’s ongoing work to refine the regulatory fee methodology to more accurately account for the work performed by employees in non-core bureaus and offices.

It requested, however, that “that the Commission consider reducing the fees assessed to earth stations to more accurately reflect the benefits provided by the FCC to these stations and raising the de minimis threshold to account for the increased cost of collecting regulatory fees.”

Finally, the NAB once again suggested that the FCC “continue to look for mechanisms that account for the significant benefits certain industries receive yet do not currently pay anything under the current fees framework.”

While the FCC has rejected attempts to expand the businesses and industries that are assessed regulatory fees to fund the agency, the NAB once again argued that the FCC “can improve the regulatory fee process by expanding its base of regulatory fee payors to include all entities that benefit directly from the Commission’s activities. The current regulatory fee process disproportionately burdens a limited group of legacy industries, despite that a larger set of entities benefit from the Commission’s work. It is neither fair nor sustainable for a small group of payors to retain the responsibility for funding the Commission’s broad and growing portfolio of activities.”

The NAB also said that it “disagrees with the Commission’s tentative conclusion in the Notice that there is no basis upon which to propose new fee categories. Over the last few years, NAB and other stakeholders have submitted several comments explaining the basis for adding new fee categories and the Commission’s legal authority to expand the base of fee payors beyond licensees to other entities that benefit from the Commission’s activities” to potentially include “broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and major technology companies (“Big Tech”).”

“NAB submits that it is undeniable that such additional entities should share in the costs of funding the Commission’s activities,” the filing noted. “And while we concede that it may be challenging to determine an appropriate methodology for calculating regulatory fees for broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and Big Tech companies, that is no reason for the Commission to avoid its obligation to apportion regulatory fees in a fair manner.”

The full filing is available here.

WASHINGTON - The National Association of Broadcasters has filed comments on the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning regulatory fee reforms. It said some of the commission’s suggestions need more specifics while others should be abandoned outright. 

The FCC had noted that radio licensees more than double TV licensees in number, yet the total fees collected from each category differ only slightly. In response, the NAB said it supports the idea of making fees more aligned to the number of FCC employees devoted to a particular service, but it called for more specifics and information on how previous fees have been calculated to develop a comparison. 

Regarding proposed changes to the station class system, the NAB expressed opposition. 

“The commission asks whether it should assess radio station fees based on market rank instead of population served, and whether it should eliminate the distinction between the types and classes of radio stations in determining fees. NAB would oppose either proposal because they would undermine the equity and fairness of the current process, which generally assesses higher fees to larger radio stations and those in larger cities than to smaller stations and those located in less populated areas,” it said. 

It pointed out that each station has a different coverage pattern, signal strength and local population density, therefore a specific prospective available population number it could theoretically serve. Merely lumping stations together by market size would be inaccurate. It also noted that 4,000 radio stations were in unrated markets. 

The NAB said various service criteria “serve as a proxy for the size, location, reach, and to an extent, the resources of individual radio stations, all of which are reflected in the current process for determining regulatory fees for radio licensees. As a result, fees are generated that fairly reflect an individual radio station’s characteristics. NAB fails to see the benefit of removing these elements from the equation, as doing so would only diminish the accuracy and specificity of the current fees.” 

NAB also said the FCC should consider how the spectrum auction will affect regulatory fees for TV licensees remaining after auction. 

The full text of its comments can be found here (PDF).