Music groups won back a rule on FM radio. The petition to delete it again has been pending ever since.

On 22 September 2026 the Commission published a correcting amendment in the Federal Register, at 91 FR 60004. It revises the heading above 47 CFR 73.3556 to "Duplication of programming on commonly owned or time brokered stations", replacing "Sponsorship identification; list retention; related requirements" — the heading of an entirely different subject, which had sat there for more than two years. Neither of the rule's paragraphs is touched.

It is also the only document citing 73.3556 the Federal Register has carried since the start of 2025. Nothing has been filed in MB Docket No. 19-310 since 29 April 2025. Sitting in that docket, undecided, is a petition from the National Association of Broadcasters to throw the rule out for a second time.

What the fight is about

The rule is short. A commercial FM station may not devote more than 25 percent of the total hours in its average broadcast week to programmes duplicating those of any station in the same service that is commonly owned or held under a time brokerage agreement, where the two stations' principal community contours, predicted at 3.16 mV/m, overlap by more than 50 percent of either station's total principal community contour service area. Duplication is defined in the rule as the broadcasting of identical programmes within any 24-hour period.

The Commission scrapped that rule for both AM and FM in August 2020, relying, in its own later account, on the "exigencies of the ongoing COVID-19 national emergency". REC Networks, the musicFIRST Coalition and the Future of Music Coalition petitioned for reconsideration that November. The Commission granted it nearly four years later, in the order numbered FCC 24-66, adopted 5 June 2024 and published at 89 FR 55078, calling the 2020 elimination for FM "at best, premature." The AM half stayed dead; the petitioners had not asked for it back.

Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel issued a statement supporting the order. Commissioner Carr and Commissioner Simington dissented. The order prints no vote tally. Carr's dissent said the Commission had mustered nothing showing the repeal caused actual harm: "Nope. Not at all. The FCC musters no evidence on this score." Brendan Carr now chairs the agency sitting on the petition.

What the rule is not

It would be easy, and wrong, to read the reinstatement as a rule that protects local music.

It reaches commercial FM only. AM stations are outside it entirely, and non-commercial stations are not commercial FM stations. It bites only between two stations under common ownership or a time brokerage agreement whose signals substantially overlap, so stations in different markets, or with modest overlap, are untouched. It says nothing about music: nothing in it obliges a station to play any, and nothing obliges a station to play local artists. It imposes no local-origination requirement. The other 75 percent of the week need not be locally produced or locally presented, and because the rule reaches only programmes that are identical, two different national syndicated feeds do not engage it. The 2024 order's own claim for it is modest: a "useful guiderail" in the FM service, not a guarantee of anything. And it can be waived.

One market, six stations, one waiver

There is one documented waiver of the reinstated rule, and both sides now argue from it.

In November 2024 Disruptor Radio LLC agreed to buy nine signals from LHTC Media of West Virginia, Inc. — four FM stations, two AM stations and three FM translators, all in one market in northern West Virginia — for 650,000 dollars. On 6 January 2025, according to reply comments from the musicFIRST and Future of Music coalitions, all six full-power AM and FM stations became a single brand carrying conservative talk, news and sports. Disruptor filed for a waiver a week later, on 15 January, covering two overlapping FM signals: WGYE of Mannington and WRLF of Fairmont.

The Audio Division granted it on 14 February 2025, unopposed, in under a month. Its stated ground, in the letter signed by Albert Shuldiner, Chief of the Audio Division:

"we find Disruptor Radio's showing regarding the distinct economic, demographic, and geographic market characteristics facing the two stations at issue demonstrates good cause, and therefore a waiver of the rule in this instance would be in the public interest."

The letter records the buyer's case. Disruptor Radio "maintains that it would be economically infeasible for the two stations to support multiple music formats, as LHTC currently does, due to the distinct characteristics of the market."

The coalitions counted the result on 28 April 2025: the market holds 26 full-power stations, six now carrying the same format, so "23 percent of full-power AM/FM stations in the market all have the same owner, the same format, and largely the same programming." On the coalitions’ account the two AM signals carry the same programming, with coverage that completely covers the two FM stations’ reception areas, and AM sits outside the rule entirely.

A petition nobody has answered

The petition was filed on 2 August 2024, the day the reinstated rule took effect. Its argument is mostly procedural: that the Commission waited nearly four years, then reversed itself on the identical record, and "willfully turned a blind eye to conducting any research — including seeking any updated comment after waiting nearly four years to act — into whether the Petitioners' doomsday claims of rampant FM service duplication have come to pass."

The original petitioners opposed it on 4 September 2024, and the broadcasters replied on 16 September. The Commission put the petition out for comment by public notice on 12 August 2024 and has not ruled. In April 2025 the trade body renewed the ask in the Commission's deregulation docket, GN Docket No. 25-133, under a section headed "FCC Should Delete the FM Radio Duplication Rule. Again." — asking it to grant the pending petition and to "DELETE 47 C.F.R. § 73.3556 for radio once again."

Whether the Commission intends to decide it is not known. Nothing in the docket, in the Federal Register or in the Commission's released documents shows a disposition, no explanation for the delay was found, and the September 2026 correction does not touch it.

Nor is there evidence either way on the question both sides say matters: whether FM duplication actually increased in the four years the rule was gone. The Commission relied on one commenter, Kern Community Radio, which said duplication was happening in its market of Bakersfield, California, and which no party refuted. The broadcasters say that commenter was describing FM translators, which are required by rule to rebroadcast their primary station. Nobody produced a count.

One caveat on the record: the 4 September 2024 opposition could not be machine-read from the copy as filed, so the arguments attributed to it here come through the broadcasters' reply, which quotes it, and the same coalitions' later filings.