STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER DEBORAH TAYLOR TATE
Re: Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast 
Licensee Public Interest Obligations
Broadcasters play a vital role in informing, educating, and alerting the public 
about developments at home and abroad.  The importance of their relationship with the 
American public cannot be overestimated.  In order to strengthen this relationship, and 
ensure that broadcasters are fulfilling their mission, today we adopt an Order that will 
make broadcasters’ operations more transparent, and allow their local viewers to see the 
educational, instructional, and outreach efforts made by broadcasters every day.
In this online world in which we live, almost every business now posts important 
product and service information online.  Government entities also make consumer 
information available on the Web, from the local DMV to the U.S. Congress.  Producers 
of news and information should make relevant business details available to their 
customers as well.  
In an effort to achieve this partnership, we first require that a broadcaster’s public 
inspection file be available on the Internet, and accessible to the disabled.  We further 
require that broadcasters adopt a standardized programming report form to replace the 
current “issues/programs” list.
This Order is not meant to burden broadcasters, but rather to help them inform 
their audiences about the valuable public interest they serve.  By providing standardized 
data, accessible online, broadcasters make it easy for local residents to understand and 
appreciate the resources they provide to their communities. For example, broadcasters 
are required to make emergency information available to persons with disabilities. This 
Order will allow local residents to go to a station’s website and see what that station has 
done to provide emergency information generally, and what efforts they have undertaken 
to make emergency information available specifically to persons with disabilities. We 
hope this will result in increased accountability and information-sharing between 
broadcasters and the public.  It will also ease the Commission’s efforts in determining 
whether a broadcaster is in compliance with Commission policies.
 Broadcasters use the public airwaves to keep Americans connected, both in times 
of joy and in times of crisis.  A more transparent operations process will allow the public 
to take advantage of all the services broadcasters have to offer.