Station Compliance›Field Notes

Ask ten small-market managers what the political advertising rules are and you will get one answer: a pile. Candidates get the cheap rate, you have to sell to everybody, there is a file somewhere. It is treated as a single body of law about political speech.

It is not. It is four separate obligations, and each one is written to bind a specific, named kind of operator. The question that actually matters is not "what are the political ad rules" but "which list is my station on", and that one has a clean answer.

The four obligations

Reasonable access. Federal candidates have a right to buy reasonable amounts of time. Refusing them is grounds for losing the licence. 47 U.S.C. § 312(a)(7).

Equal opportunities, and no censorship. If you let one candidate for an office use your station, you owe the same opportunity to every other candidate for that office, and you cannot edit what they say. Newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot news coverage are exempt. 47 U.S.C. § 315(a).

Lowest unit charge. In the 45 days before a primary and the 60 days before a general election, a candidate pays your lowest unit charge for the same class and amount of time. Outside those windows, no more than a commercial advertiser pays for comparable time. 47 U.S.C. § 315(b), 47 CFR § 73.1942.

The political file. A record of every request to buy time, public, online, and uploaded immediately. 47 CFR § 73.1943, covered in detail in the political file, where "as soon as possible" has a definition.

Who each one binds

Satellite television is the other named class: § 335(a) applies both reasonable access and § 315 to direct broadcast satellite providers carrying video.

The row that gives it away

Look at cable. It gets equal opportunities, lowest unit charge and a political file. It does not get reasonable access.

That is not an oversight. Section 315 defines "broadcasting station" to include a cable system, so everything in § 315 reaches cable. Section 312(a)(7) does not borrow that definition. It says "broadcasting station" and stops, and it carves out noncommercial educational stations while it is at it. The Commission's own cable rule states the result plainly: "No cable television system is required to permit the use of its facilities by any legally qualified candidate" (§ 76.205(a)).

So the whole structure is a set of closed lists, one per obligation, each naming the licence classes it covers. These are not principles about political speech that spread to anyone who carries it. Once you see that, the streaming question answers itself: a station that holds no FCC licence is on none of the lists.

If you hold a licence

All four apply, and this year two of them are live right now. The general election is November 3, 2026, so the 60-day lowest unit charge window opened on September 4. Every candidate order taken since then is priced at your lowest unit charge for that class of time, and every request is a political file record the same hour it arrives.

If you are streaming-only

None of the four FCC obligations apply. You can turn a candidate down. You can sell to one candidate and not the opponent. Your rate card is your rate card, with no lowest unit charge and no 60-day window. There is no political file. Know that before you quote a campaign broadcast-style terms out of habit, because you can give that advantage away by accident.

That is the half people enjoy hearing, and it is incomplete. Three things still reach you:

Federal campaign-finance disclaimers. Federal Election Commission rules treat communications "placed or promoted for a fee on another person's website, digital device, application, or advertising platform" as public communications (11 CFR § 100.26), which is what a paid spot on your stream is. The disclaimer is the campaign's legal duty, not yours, but a federal spot that arrives without one is a spot you would rather not air.

State election law. States regulate political advertising regardless of who licenses the transmitter. California, for example, requires the disclosures on a radio advertisement to come at the beginning or end, clearly spoken, in a pitch and tone like the rest of the ad, and lasting at least three seconds (Gov. Code § 84504). Your state will have its own version. "The FCC does not regulate me" is true and teaches nothing about the state.

Your streaming host's terms. Platforms set their own rules on political content, and those are a contract you have already agreed to.

The competitive part, said plainly

A licensed station selling candidate time at lowest unit charge, keeping a political file and taking every federal candidate who calls, is competing for the same local campaign dollars as a stream that does none of it. That is lawful on both sides. The licensee's answer is not to quietly drop the obligations to match a rate. It is to sell what the licence actually gives it: the transmitter, the coverage and the audience the campaign is trying to reach.

Before money moves

This is an implementation perspective, not legal advice. The federal lists above are short and the statutes are linked, but how they apply to a specific buy, and everything at state level, is for communications counsel and a lawyer who knows your state's election code. Ask them before the first invoice, not after the first complaint.

For what else a licensed station has to keep current, see the public inspection file and sponsorship identification.