Is Station Compliance a law firm or a consultancy?

No. It is one working broadcaster publishing an implementation perspective, plus a paid kit and an optional done-for-you service. Nothing here is legal advice, a compliance certification, or a security audit, and contested questions belong with communications counsel or an SBE-certified broadcast engineer.

Why should a station trust this over a trade-press summary?

Because every claim on this site is tied to the rule text or the enforcement record, and the equipment guidance was written by someone configuring the same boxes at his own station. Where the answer is not known — television master control being far less standardised than a radio air chain — the page says so instead of inventing vendor claims.

Station Compliance›About

About

Who writes Station Compliance

Q: Who writes Station Compliance?

Mark Shannon, who has spent 43 years in broadcasting and owns and programs Power88.FM. He does his own rack work — STL, codecs, automation, transmitter remote control — which is the same equipment 47 CFR § 11.35(d) puts in scope.

One person, 43 years in broadcasting, who owns a station and does his own rack work. That is the whole qualification, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not cover.

Who writes Station Compliance?

Mark Shannon. He has spent 43 years in broadcasting and is the owner and program director of Power88.FM. He also builds Cartwright, the traffic, CRM and billing software small-market stations run day to day, and Show Prep Pro. All of it sits under Martian Creative, LLC.

Like most people at a station this size, he does his own rack work: STL, codecs, automation, audio processing, transmitter remote control. That is not incidental to this site — it is the entire reason it exists. Those are precisely the boxes § 11.35(d) puts in scope, and the gap between reading the rule and changing a password on a device that has been running untouched since 2014 is where this work actually lives.

The site was built because the rule was being read too narrowly. The trade coverage treated § 11.35(d) as an EAS-box rule. It is not. It reaches the studio-transmitter link and any remotely managed equipment that routes, processes or inserts content into programming — which at a small station is most of the rack.

What the qualification actually is

Being exact about this matters more than the credential would.

It is operator experience, not a licence. Mark is not a lawyer and is not an SBE-certified broadcast engineer. He is the person who has to make the station comply, at a station with no engineer on staff, which is the same position most readers of this site are in.
Every claim is tied to a source. The rule text, the FCC order, or the enforcement record — cited on the page, not summarised from a summary. Where an article names a forfeiture amount, there is a case behind it.
The equipment guidance was written against real units. The default credentials and the settings paths in the device reference came from configuring the boxes, not from a vendor datasheet.
Where the answer is not known, the page says so. The television device reference gives method rather than verified per-vendor entries, because television master control is far less standardised than a radio air chain, and inventing vendor security claims would be worse than admitting the boundary.

What Station Compliance is not

It is not a law firm, not a consultancy with a bench, and not a certification body. Nothing on this site is legal advice, a compliance certification, or a security audit, and none of it guarantees a regulatory outcome. Your station remains responsible for its own compliance. For contested questions — and there are some — talk to communications counsel or an SBE-certified broadcast engineer.

It is also not a rule tracker that will quietly go stale. Every page carries the date its content reflects, and the reference pages are revised when the Commission moves.

Why most of it is free

The reference pages — the rule, the equipment scope, Field Notes — are free to read, complete, and carry no email wall. A station that reads them and does the work itself has been served, and that is a fine outcome.

The Program Chain Compliance Kit is the implementation version: the device-by-device reference, network segmentation patterns for a one-rack station, and the worksheets that leave a paper trail behind the work. It exists because knowing what the rule requires and having the documents to satisfy it are different problems.

How to get in touch

Email hello@stationcompliance.com. A real person answers, and it is the same person who wrote the pages. Corrections are welcome and get made — if something here is wrong about your equipment or your reading of the rule, that is worth knowing.

The implementation version

Everything on this site is free to read. The Program Chain Compliance Kit is the part that gets it done — the verified device reference, three network patterns for a one-rack station, and the worksheets already written.

See what is in the kit — $149

Start here