The FCC is charged with the authority to grant the right to radio and television broadcasters to serve the public interest. As a result, private stations are able to use the public airwaves for commercial broadcasts, which begs the question: What do broadcasters owe the public in return? It’s a hard question to answer, but not just for ethical or theoretical reasons. Regulations have been in a near-constant state of flux ever since radio wave access was codified with the Radio Act of 1927, and later, the Telecommunications Act of 1934. The FCC and broadcasters have entered agreements with the understanding that broadcasters could serve the public good, as our colleagues have previously noted, but the definition of "public good" is open ended and the most recent rules proposed in 2008, have yet to take effect.
Today, the FCC requires that all radio and TV broadcasters must compile certain documents that record their public service programming and make publicly available others, such as files on pending litigation, in order to maintain their broadcasting licenses. Since each broadcast licensee is expected to locate its main studio within its principal community signal contour, these files should be accessible to the community its broadcasts serve. Commercial or noncommercial, every station must maintain public files that include the following parts: applications and related materials filed with the Commission, ownership reports, employment reports, a list of programs aired by the stations during the previous three months that provided its most significant treatment of community issues, a separate "political file" documenting requests for broadcast time made by or on behalf of candidates for public office, information on children's educational and informational programming.
Here are two maps of television stations. The first provides clickable links to all stations and the second has links only to stations where we have collected and scanned public files. Both of these maps are courtesy of the
Community Media Database created and managed by Rob McCausland.
All Full Power Television Stations
Full power Television stations where we have links to their files
To access the map with additional options do click
here.
Below are links to the files we've collected to data and are providing as a public resource for viewing records of the public interest obligations from stations around the country. For more information on what we're gathering, see
our blog post.
Public File Information Collected to date
District of Columbia
California
Los Angeles
Hawaii
Minnesota
TPT 3rd Qtr 2009 Quarterly Listing of the Most Substantial Treatment of Community Issues
TPT 4th Qtr 2009 Quarterly Listing of the Most Substantial Treatment of Community Issues
TPT 1st Qtr 2010 Quarterly Listing of the Most Substantial Treatment of Community Issues
TPT 2nd Qtr 2010 Quarterly Listing of the Most Substantial Treatment of Community Issues
New York
New Jersey
North Carolina
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Other background documents
Federal Communications Commission:
National Telecommunications and Information Administration:
New America Foundation:
The Benton Foundation:
Media Access Project:
