Station Compliance›Field Notes
On-Air Rules
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.
By Mark Shannon ·
Sponsorship identification is the rule behind the phrase "paid for by," and it is broader than most stations treat it. It is not only about political spots. It covers anything that aired because somebody provided money, services, or material in exchange for the airtime.
From § 73.1212(a), when matter is broadcast for consideration, the station "shall announce":
(1) That such matter is sponsored, paid for, or furnished, either in whole or in part, and (2) By whom or on whose behalf such consideration was supplied.
Two facts: that it was paid for, and by whom. The announcement is made at the time of broadcast.
For most commercial advertising this is satisfied automatically. Under § 73.1212(f), an announcement stating the sponsor's corporate or trade name, or the name of the sponsor's product, is deemed sufficient — and only one such announcement is needed. A car dealer's ad that says the dealer's name has identified its sponsor by saying so.
The rule bites where the money is less visible.
Political and controversial-issue matter. Under § 73.1212(d), where the material is furnished, an announcement is required both at the beginning and at the conclusion of the broadcast. Only for broadcasts of five minutes or less does one announcement suffice, at either end. A long-form issue programme with a single tag at the end is not compliant.
Trade-out and barter. Airtime exchanged for goods or services is consideration. The concert tickets, the hotel stay, the equipment — if programming aired because of it, the arrangement is sponsored matter.
Furnished material. A ready-made feature, interview segment or "news" package supplied free by an interested party is furnished for consideration in the sense the rule means. The fact that no invoice exists is not the test.
Promotional consideration inside programming. A product placed, mentioned or supplied for airing under an arrangement is sponsored matter even when no spot ran.
The recurring pattern is not a station taking money it knew was dirty. It is a station treating "we did not invoice anyone" as equivalent to "nobody paid for this."
§ 73.1212(b) is the sleeper clause. The licensee:
shall exercise reasonable diligence to obtain from its employees... information to enable such licensee to make the announcement required
This is an affirmative obligation to find out. It is not enough to announce what you were told; you have to make reasonable efforts to learn who is actually behind a buy, including by asking your own staff what they know about how a piece of programming came to air.
In practice that means an agency placing a spot for an undisclosed client is a question you are expected to ask, and a part-timer who arranged a segment in exchange for something is information you are expected to have a way of learning.
For political and controversial-issue matter paid for by an entity rather than a person, § 73.1212(e) requires that a list of the chief executive officers, or the members of the executive committee, or of the board of directors be made available for public inspection, and kept for two years.
This is the same document the political file rule demands, and it goes missing for the same reason: it is not on the insertion order, so obtaining it means going back to a buyer who would rather not send it. The obligation is yours regardless.
If you sell political or issue advertising, put this on the order form. Collecting it at the point of sale takes one line; collecting it in November takes a week and sometimes never works.
Ask one question of every buy: why is this airing? If the answer involves anything of value moving in your direction, it is sponsored matter and needs identification.
Put the disclosure requirements on the rate card and the order form, including the officers list for entity-funded political and issue buys. Paperwork that asks the question gets the answer.
Tell your sales and programming staff what triggers the rule. § 73.1212(b) makes their knowledge your problem, which means the cheapest compliance measure available is a ten-minute conversation about trade-outs and furnished material.
Check your long-form political content for the both-ends announcement. Anything over five minutes needs one at the start and one at the finish.
Keep the officer lists for two years, in the public file, where they belong.
Sponsorship identification sits on a statutory footing — 47 U.S.C. § 317 — rather than being purely a Commission rule, and its purpose is the plainest in all of broadcasting: the audience is entitled to know when someone paid to talk to them.
That makes it a poor candidate for a technical defence. A station arguing it did not know whose money it was runs directly into a rule that says finding out was its job.
The political file covers the parallel recordkeeping obligation and its same-day deadline, and the legal ID covers the other announcement that runs all day.
Everything on this site is free to read. The Program Chain Compliance Kit is the implementation version — the device-by-device reference, the network patterns for a one-rack station, and the worksheets that leave a paper trail behind the work.
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