Station Compliance›Field Notes
Free reference
What the FCC actually requires of a small station — the rule text, the deadlines, and the enforcement record, without the hedging. Everything here is free and stays free.
Every citation on this site is checked against the Commission's own documents — the Report and Order, the Federal Register text, the enforcement release — and linked so you can read the original. Where something is genuinely unsettled, or currently waived, it says so.
Form Two is the shortest filing in ETRS and the easiest one to miss, because it is due 48 hours after a test most people stop thinking about once it is over. Here is what to have ready, what to write down while it happens, and why the same afternoon is the right time to file.
The first nationwide EAS test since 2023 runs through the same EAS unit the program-chain security rule covers. Here are the dates from the FCC notice, and a checklist to work through before the afternoon of the test.
Form One has no fixed annual date. For 2026 the FCC set it for October 30, three weeks before the first nationwide EAS test since 2023. Here is everything in the Public Notice, in the order you need it.
Most compliance calendars you find online are wrong within a year, because they print dates that the Commission actually sets annually. Here is which is which.
The rule is easy to read and hard to apply until you know exactly what is on your chain. Most stations have never written that down. This is how to do it in an afternoon, with nothing more than a notepad, the router login and a phone.
Somebody has probably quoted you a fine figure for this. It is worth knowing where that number came from, because it almost certainly attaches to a different rule.
There is no late fee, no automatic penalty and no form you failed to send. What there is instead is a rule you are now on the wrong side of, and a short list of things that close most of the gap in an afternoon.
The third requirement is the one with real money attached, and it is also the one written most loosely on purpose. What the text actually demands is narrower than most stations assume.
Several broadcaster groups asked the Commission for relief on exactly these grounds. The order answers them directly, in a paragraph worth reading before you assume the rule is somebody else's problem.
Rules do not appear from nowhere. This one has a footnote trail, and reading it tells you more about your actual exposure than the rule text does.
The compliance deadline is getting all the attention, but the second half of FCC 26-38 is where the next several years of equipment decisions get made.
The rule is short enough to quote in full, and three details in it catch stations out — the no-reuse clause, the dictionary-word clause, and the escape hatch for equipment that physically cannot comply.
Every operator who streams has asked whether the FCC rules apply. The honest answer is mostly no, which is exactly why it is rarely written down by people who sell FCC compliance. Here it is, rule by rule, with what takes the FCC's place.
The window most people assume closed permanently in the 1990s opened again in 2026. The Auction 114 filing window has now closed, bidding starts in February, and the authority behind it runs to 2034.
Small radio talks about "the political ad rules" as one pile. They are four separate obligations, and each one names exactly who it binds. Find your station on the list and most of the confusion goes away.
Two announcements, one duty of inquiry, and a two-year record. The obligation most likely to be breached by a station that never took a dollar it thought was suspicious.
Almost every station gets the timing right and the wording wrong. The rule is unusually literal about word order, and the list of permitted insertions is closed.
The Commission required 3.0 broadcasters to comply with the EAS rules when it authorised the standard. What has changed since is the size of the attack surface.
Television's most numerically precise obligation, and the one where a station can be doing the programming correctly and still be out of compliance on the display and the filing.
Two separate obligations run through the same box. The program chain security rule already puts you in front of it, which makes this the cheapest audit available.
§ 79.2 is the television obligation most likely to be running wrong right now, because nothing on your monitor wall shows you the secondary audio stream.
Television plants have more equipment inside the September 29 rule than radio plants do, and the device that puts the alert on screen is the one nobody has counted.
Two exposure limits, four tiers of signage, and a transition period that closed three years ago. This is the compliance gap most likely to already exist at your site.
Of everything on a station's compliance list, this is the one where the consequence of getting it wrong is not regulatory. It is an aircraft.
Most public file obligations run on a quarterly rhythm. This one runs on the pace of your ad traffic, and it is the item a diligent station is most likely to be violating right now.
Some of the file is populated by the FCC automatically. The rest is on you — and knowing which is which is most of the job.
It is the least technical obligation a station has and one of the most consistently enforced. The rule is two sentences long; the consequences of ignoring it compound for eight years.
Audit letters go to randomly selected stations, commercial and noncommercial alike. If yours is on the list the response is due in under two months, and the file it asks for is one most small stations have never assembled.
The rules on this site change without warning — a deadline gets waived, a filing window opens, a Public Notice lands on a Friday. Leave an address and you get an email when something changes that affects a small station. Nothing else, and one click to leave.
The Program Chain Compliance Kit is the implementation version of what these articles describe — device-by-device settings, network patterns for a one-rack station, and the worksheets that document the work.