The NAB is pushing back on a proposed 46% fee hike from the FCC and calling on the Commission to make “Big Tech” pay its share, with the filing landing the same week several small radio station classes crossed the de minimis exemption threshold for the first time.
The association responded to the Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on regulatory fees for fiscal year 2026. The filing addresses proposed fee allocations, earth station assessments, the de minimis threshold, and the Commission’s refusal to add new categories of fee payors, including broadband providers and major technology companies.
The NAB supports the FCC’s proposed FY 2026 allocations and the continued use of a population-based methodology for broadcast television fees, which the trade group has backed since the Commission adopted it in 2020.
The filing offers four areas where NAB says the Commission should go further.
The sharpest objection targets earth station fees. The Commission proposes raising the per-authorization fee from $2,060 to $3,010, a 46% increase from FY 2025, even as the Space Bureau reduced its full-time employee count from 51 to 48. NAB attributes the spike to a shrinking pool of earth station licensees — down from 4,000 in 2025 to 3,250 in 2026 — spreading a revenue requirement that itself rose nearly 19 percent. The filing argues the increase is disproportionate given that broadcaster-operated earth stations are fixed facilities requiring minimal Commission oversight, and that broadcasters already pay earth station fees on top of their broadcast license fees.
The NAB points to “a blatant asymmetry” in the Space Bureau’s fee structure: each GSO satellite is assessed $178,700, while the proposed fee for the entire Starlink constellation of 11,908 satellites amounts to $191 per satellite. The filing urges the Commission to shift costs toward non-geostationary orbit space stations, where, NAB argues, the bulk of the Space Bureau’s regulatory workload now lies.
On the de minimis threshold, NAB asks the Commission to raise the current $1,000 floor, which has not been updated since 2017.
The filing notes that several radio station classes previously exempt from regulatory fees will no longer qualify under the FY 2026 proposal: FM Classes A, B1, and C3 stations serving populations between 10,001 and 25,000 are set at $1,050, and AM Class B stations serving populations between 25,001 and 75,000 are set at $1,035, both just above the exemption line. NAB cites rising collection costs as justification, pointing to a GS-13 salary increase from $106,823 in 2022 to $121,785 today, and recommends raising the threshold to at least $1,200.
The filing renews NAB’s longstanding argument that the regulatory fee system is structurally imbalanced. The Commission tentatively concluded in its notice that there is no basis to propose new fee categories.
The NAB disagrees, arguing that broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and major technology companies all benefit from the Commission’s work without contributing to its costs. The filing acknowledges the Commission has previously rejected similar proposals for lack of specificity, but attributes that gap to an information asymmetry: only the FCC has access to the internal FTE data from which it determined new categories are unwarranted.
“It is undeniable that such additional entities should share in the costs of funding the Commission’s activities,” the filing states, and NAB says it remains willing to meet with Commission staff to find an administrable approach.
The filing also calls for greater transparency in the FTE reallocation process, arguing that without knowing the rationale behind specific reallocations, stakeholders cannot provide the “thorough analysis” the Commission says it requires to justify changes. The Commission proposed reallocating 61 FTEs from the Office of Economics and Analytics, the Office of General Counsel, and the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau as direct FTEs to core bureaus for FY 2026, along with moving two Media Bureau FTEs to indirect status.
The FCC is expected to adopt final FY 2026 regulatory fees later this year.
