The FCC on Friday announced that they were extending the deadline for filing Biennial Ownership Reports by broadcasters from December 1 to March 2, 2018 to be sure that the new version of the form in the FCC’s LMS database will be up and ready to be used. The FCC will open the window for filing these ownership reports on December 1 (which was to be the deadline). However, the reports will still report on the ownership of each broadcast station as of October 1, 2017, meaning that station owners who sell their station between October 1 and the new deadline are being told by the FCC that they will need to file their own biennial reports – even if they no longer own any broadcast stations.

We have written about these reports in the past, and about the particular controversy about whether noncommercial broadcasters needed to obtain an FCC Registration Number (FRN) for each of its owners (see our article here about the FCC decision to not require that information). This is the first time that noncommercial entities will be filing their Biennial Reports at the same time as commercial broadcasters. Noncommercial broadcasters previously filed on the anniversary date of their license renewal filing, a system put on hold last year in anticipation of this year’s filing deadline.