Today, I heard a promo for a radio station that mentioned that it did not news or sports. That reminded me that multiple radio stations don’t air news, or for that matter TV stations. For example, the ABC affiliate in St. Louis doesn’t air its own news programming. Doesn’t every station have to air some public affairs programming? How do they avoid removal of their license?
I think they removed that requirement a few years back. The reason for it to begin with was to insure that there would indeed be news broadcast, and with so few channels broadcasting, the only way to enforce it was to say that everyone has to do the news. But now that we have so many all-news channels, I guess they felt that it is an unfair burden on entertainment broadcasters.
The FCC ended the specific requirement that radio and TV stations have news and public affairs programming way back in the 1980s.(Warning: exceptionally long and detailed pdf) There’s a vague requirement that stations air programming “in the public interest” but that’s pretty much left to the individual station to define.
The FCC still requires commercial TV to broadcast three hours of educational/informational programming for children each week. That’s mostly been slotted into Saturday or Sunday mornings, or, in some cases, shoved over to a station’s digital subchannel.
As for the ABC station in St. Louis, they said back in February they’d start producing a local newscast sometime this spring. They still haven’t.