The Society of Broadcast Engineers, the association for broadcast and multimedia technology professionals, has released new Broadcast Station Self-Inspection Guides for FM and TV broadcast stations. The SBE partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to produce the documents, which are the first part of a planned series to cover all broadcast services. These Guides are designed to aid stations and Alternative Broadcast Inspection Program (ABIP) inspectors in evaluating a broadcast station’s compliance with FCC rules and regulations.
The Guides were developed to replace the FCC Self-Inspection Checklists that were first released in the 1990s, but have not been updated for nearly 15 years. While the previous Checklists only provided references to rules, the new SBE Guides include recommended practices for stations to establish policies and procedures for their own stations to ensure overall regulatory compliance.
The project was announced at the SBE National Meeting held in September 2023, and received widespread support from state broadcaster associations, many of which are actively involved in their own ABIP programs.
The SBE Government Relations Committee, chaired by Charles “Ched” Keiler, CPBE, 8-VSB, ATSC3, CBNE, formed a working group of SBE members in April 2022 to begin reviewing and updating the Guides. The first Guides to be released will cover FM and TV broadcasting. Additional Guides for AM and other services are under review and will be released later.
SBE President Ted Hand, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, ATSC3, DRB, said, “These updated and improved Self-Inspection Guides have been on engineers’, ABIP inspectors’ and broadcast stations’ wish lists for some time. With the assistance from the NAB, we’re looking forward to sharing them with the industry.
The Guides are available for download from the SBE website under the Legislative/Regulatory and Resources tab. They are free to SBE members.
