Broadcasters Divided on Potential Political File Changes
Some broadcasters could be open to expected FCC proposals to require that political advertising data in online public files be machine-readable if it leads to more clarity on the rules for political ad filings, industry lawyers and officials told us. Others expect NAB and others to unequivocally oppose such a move.
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The FCC hasn’t said such a rule is coming. Observers though said it's a likely policy goal for Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel once she has an FCC majority (see 2112200018). The agency doesn’t provide a form for political ad data collection and there’s a lack of guidance on what’s required, said Foster Garvey broadcast attorney Brad Deutsch. That led to a host of consent decrees on political file violations over the past two years, he said: “No one knows how to do it.” The FCC declined to comment.
Currently, broadcaster online political files must include initial requests for commercial time from candidates, the final deals for paid ads and details of when they aired, all updated immediately as things change. This information is generally uploaded as scans of contracts and digitized versions of a form NAB provides members for the purpose, called a PB-19, lawyers said. Each station’s online political file is publicly accessible, but there’s currently no good way to aggregate the information, said Jeffrey Blevins, University of Cincinnati journalism professor.
That makes it cumbersome for journalists or organizations to compile the ad filings to learn how money is being spent on broadcast ads, the academic said. When Blevins co-authored a paper on broadcaster political files in 2018, he had to use research assistants to individually enter the data from individual stations into a database. That paper also relied on machine-readable data bought from commercial vendor Kantar, Blevins said. Large broadcast groups such as Nexstar have a national reach, but their ad information is still individualized by station. “There is definitely a public interest to get that data at scale,” he said.
Most stations use the PB-19, but it isn’t required, and broadcast attorneys and public interest advocates agree creating a standardized FCC form would likely be part of any effort to require machine-readable political ad data. The agency uses such forms for most of its other data collection, and it stands out that the industry had to create its own form for political ads, Deutsch said. A new form with simpler, standardized inputs would make things easier for broadcasters, said Steve Lovelady, of Shainis & Peltzman. The certainty of a standardized process would appeal to many station owners, Deutsch said. Many companies would say that “I don’t care what the regulation is, just tell me what to do, and I will bake that into my business platform,” he said.
Even if it involves more clarity for broadcasters, an effort to make political ad data machine-readable is certain to be contentious, attorneys and industry officials said. Statutory requirements for the filings would be difficult to simplify, said Pillsbury's Scott Flick. There’s a wide variety of political spots and wide disparities in the resources of the broadcasters that report the data, Flick said. “This isn’t a one-size-fits-all.” Political files are constantly being updated as ad buys progress, making them “a chaotic place,” Flick said.
The political file process is complicated, but it’s not clear that machine-searchable ad data would provide much more transparency than what is in existing Federal Election Commission requirements, said Deutsch: “Is this a solution in search of a problem?” Many large broadcasters have existing systems for gathering the required information, and changing them would likely be expensive, an industry official said.
Allowing the data to remain unsearchable “puts a real burden on the public for an industry that is explicitly beholden to the public interest,” said Meredith McGehee, a transparency advocate formerly with Issue One and Campaign Legal Center. Georgetown Law professor emeritus Angela Campbell said digital ads are now a huge part of political spots, but TV campaign ads are still a substantial portion. “You’re publicly licensed, you have to be accountable,” said Campbell, former head of the Institute for Public Representation. TV ads are “still the bread and butter” of political communication, said McGehee. Blevins said the question of how expensive a new process would be for broadcasters is likely to be an important factor.