FCC Further Extends Certain Deadlines

As we reported, immediately after reopening from the Federal government shutdown, the FCC extended most filing deadlines that would have fallen during the shutdown to January 30, 2019. Upon review, the FCC has now further extended many of those deadlines. In a Public Notice released on January 30, the Commission's Bureaus and Offices collectively retained the January 30 due date for most filings that would have been due between January 3 and January 7. The deadline for filings that would otherwise have been due between January 8 and February 7, however, has now been extended to February 8, with a few exceptions. Specifically, the Public Notice explicitly adopted different deadlines for the following items:

• Filings otherwise due to be filed in the Universal Licensing System (ULS) from January 3 through February 8 (except those related to auctions) are now due on February 8;
• Any ULS filings submitted between January 3 and January 29 would be considered received on January 29, 2019;
• Written responses to consumer complaints that would have been due during the shutdown are due on January 30;
• All filings required to be made to online public inspection files between January 3 and January 28 (including broadcasters' quarterly reports for the fourth quarter of 2018) will be due by February 11;
• Deadlines for comments and reply comments on the Media Bureau's proposal to modernize carriage election notice requirements will be extended to 30 days and 45 days, respectively, after Federal Register publication of a separate Public Notice released today extending those deadlines.

While the Public Notice noted that deadlines established by statute (such as those related to petitions for reconsideration) cannot be extended by the Commission, the Notice did state that the Commission would not consider itself to have been open for business for purposes of calculating such deadlines until January 30.

As with the previous extensions, this release does not extend any deadlines related to the Network Outage Reporting or Disaster Information Reporting systems, or those related to the broadcast incentive auction and related repack of television channels.