CALM Act Deadline Coming Dec. 13

Dec. 13 may be a hard deadline for Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act compliance for full-power stations that received waivers for the original compliance date of Dec. 13, 2012, said a blog post on the Fletcher Heald website by broadcast attorney Dan Kirkpatrick. Two one-year waivers were “expressly provided for by Congress in the CALM Act,” but no more than that, Kirkpatrick said. Though the FCC has the ability to issue a waiver for any of its rules, stations that aren’t yet in compliance with the CALM Act shouldn’t count on a further extension of the deadline, he wrote. When the commission updated the algorithms the CALM Act uses to calculate loudness earlier this year (see 1406050067), it emphasized stations with existing financial hardship waivers for the CALM Act will have to comply “when their financial hardship waivers expire,” Kirkpatrick said. If the FCC considers further waiver requests, it may use the stiffer standards it used in 2012 for waiver requests from companies that didn’t qualify as small businesses, Kirkpatrick said.