Radio or TV station that does not accept on-air advertisements
A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a
Nearly all non-commercial radio stations derive their support from listener support, grants and endowments, such as the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that distributes supporting funds provided by Congress to support public radio.
Reserved channels
On the
class D NCE stations unable to find another frequency; the frequency has been unused for its intended purpose in the United States since
KSFH shut down in 2021.
Many of the reserved-band channels are used by stations bordering the United States, such as with
broadcasting in the San Diego/Tijuana metropolitan area. Additionally, neither the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission nor Mexico's
Federal Telecommunications Institute have such a reserved band. (In Mexico, individual stations belonging to state and federal governments, educational institutions, and non-profit groups are licensed under permits or
permisos, which are non-commercial, non-profit licenses that do not permit advertising. Canada, in practice, generally keeps most of the U.S. NCE band as noncommercial or with limited advertising based on each individual licence, but there are exceptions, such as
CIXL, a fully commercial station that operates on 91.7.)
NCE stations may also operate on a non-reserved channel. However this was rare in the United States due to the high cost of buying a
XEWH-TV, the main station of the state network of Sonora, operate under commercial concessions and not permits. A number of new low power FM (
LPFM) NCE stations operating in the non-reserved part of the spectrum have been licensed by the FCC since the
Local Community Radio Act was enacted in 2010.
Definition of "commercial"
The FCC defines several different activities as being commercial in nature.
public college. Money can be accepted if there is no on-air mention of the sponsor. NCE stations may also not mention prices or qualities of commercial products or services in any situation which would be construed as
promoting or
endorsing any company, regardless of whether it sponsors the station.
[citation needed]
TV show rather than in the middle, as they have increasingly become on commercial stations.
[citation needed]
Retransmission consent has often been chosen over must-carry by the major commercial television networks.[citation needed] Under the present rules, a new agreement is negotiated every three years, and stations must choose must-carry or retransmission consent for each cable system they wish their signal to be carried on. Non-commercial stations (such as local PBS stations) may not seek retransmission consent and may only invoke must-carry status.[3]
Multichannel obligations
Like commercial stations, NCE stations are allowed to
blind
.
NCE stations broadcasting in
bitrate) in a similar manner, however, the commercial use is limited. The main program must always be non-commercial, and must not have its quality diminished excessively by increased
lossy compression done in order to fit the auxiliary service within the allowable
bit rate. NCE
digital television (DTV) stations do not pay the FCC a percentage of their
revenue from these leases as commercial DTV stations do. No such
datacasting fee is levied on any analog or FM/AM station, whether commercial or NCE.
See also
References
External links
