The Federal Communications Commission recently released a long awaited order providing regulatory relief for public, educational, and governmental (“PEG”) access channels and the thousands of community organizations and individuals that provide programming to them.

In Closed Captioning of Video Programming; Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., Petition for Rulemaking; Delete, Delete, Delete, FCC 26-57, the Commission eliminated duplicative FCC registration and certification requirements for many PEG programmers. The Order was adopted August 21 and released August 26, 2026.

The key point for local governments and community media organizations is that the FCC has reduced paperwork for PEG programmers. However, it has not eliminated substantive Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) accessibility obligations.

What the FCC Changed

The Commission’s rules adopted in 2016 contemplated requiring individual video programmers to register with the FCC and certify their compliance with, or exemption from, the FCC’s television closed-captioning rules. For PEG access, that could mean potentially thousands of community producers separately filing paperwork even though their programming appeared exclusively on a PEG channel that was itself exempt.

The new Order provides a more practical channel-level approach.

For an exempt PEG channel, individual video programmers that provide programming exclusively to that channel will not have to separately register and certify if the PEG channel administrator files the required contact information and certifies that the channel is exempt from the FCC’s captioning requirements. The FCC specifically notes that a PEG channel may qualify, for example, because it yields less than $3 million annually or satisfies another categorical exemption. If the administrator does not make the required filing, however, the individual programmers remain responsible for registration and certification.

The FCC also adopted an important provision for the comparatively rare non-exempt PEG channel. An individual programmer will not need to register and certify if the channel administrator instead certifies that all programming carried on the channel is either compliant with the FCC captioning requirements or exempt from them. Again, if the administrator does not make the channel-level filing, the individual programmer retains its filing obligations.

Similar relief applies to programming supplied exclusively to non-broadcast networks distributed by cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors where the network itself makes the required certification.

The FCC estimates that approximately 290,000 programmers could avoid duplicative filings and projects net annual regulatory savings of approximately $2.41 million.

A Decade-Long Community Media Effort

The decision is particularly significant because it brings to a close an effort that began ten years ago.

The Alliance for Community Media (“ACM”) filed its original petition in August 2016 seeking relief from registration and certification requirements for producers providing programming exclusively to PEG channels. ACM explained that PEG programming is created by more than 1.2 million volunteers and more than 250,000 community groups nationwide and that requiring those individual programmers to make duplicative federal filings would impose a substantial burden with little corresponding benefit.

When the FCC returned to the issue in its 2024 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, community media organizations and local governments again participated actively. Reply comments were filed by ACM and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA), as well as a coalition consisting of the City of Boston, Massachusetts; City of Worcester, Massachusetts; Texas Coalition of Cities for Utility Issues; Howard County, Maryland; and City of Bowie, Maryland.

That advocacy mattered. The Order repeatedly relies upon the record developed by ACM, NATOA, and the local government commenters. Among other things, the FCC cites the Local Governments and ACM in concluding that separate programmer filings would be duplicative, and it specifically credits the Local Governments’ position that the same channel-level certification concept should be available for non-exempt PEG channels.

The result is a sensible regulatory structure. Where a PEG organization is capable of addressing compliance or exemption for the channel as a whole, hundreds or thousands of individual community producers should not have to submit redundant paperwork to Washington.

The Order Does Not Eliminate Captioning Obligations

Local governments and community media organizations should be careful not to characterize FCC 26-57 as a new exemption from closed captioning.

The FCC could hardly have been clearer: “these rule changes do not alter any video programmer’s substantive captioning obligations.” Programming that is exempt remains exempt, while non-exempt programming must continue to be captioned. The Commission described the Order as a mechanism for eliminating unnecessary and duplicative paperwork, rather than reducing the accessibility of programming.

That distinction is especially important for governmental programming.

The ADA Continues to Apply Independently

Nothing in FCC 26-57 changes the effective-communication requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Title II of the ADA independently requires state and local governments to take appropriate steps to ensure that communications with people with disabilities are as effective as communications with others and to furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary. 28 C.F.R. § 35.160. Those auxiliary aids and services expressly include open and closed captioning and real-time captioning.

Accordingly, an FCC exemption from the television closed-captioning rules is not an ADA safe harbor. A city council meeting, public hearing, emergency communication, governmental video, or other local government program may be exempt from a FCC captioning requirement yet still require captioning, or another appropriate auxiliary aid or service, to provide effective communication under the ADA.

Community media organizations should likewise evaluate the ADA, Section 504, contractual accessibility provisions, and other applicable federal, state, and local requirements separately from the FCC’s rules. The FCC Order addresses one regulatory regime. It does not displace other accessibility laws.

When Does the New Rule Take Effect?

The principal PEG relief is not effective immediately.

The amendments creating the new exceptions from individual registration and certification—47 C.F.R. §§ 79.1(i)(4) and (m)(6)—may contain modified information-collection requirements and therefore must first undergo Office of Management and Budget review under the Paperwork Reduction Act. The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau will announce their effective date in the Federal Register and through a subsequent Public Notice.

Once the amended certification regime becomes effective, cable operators and other video programming distributors also will be relieved of the interim requirement to use “best efforts” to obtain caption-quality certifications from individual programmers.

What Local Governments and Community Media Centers Should Do Now

Local governments and PEG organizations should use the period before implementation to:

• Identify the entity that will serve as the PEG channel administrator for FCC registration and certification purposes.
• Confirm and document the basis for any channel-wide FCC captioning exemption.
• Develop a centralized process for making the FCC filing rather than leaving filings to individual community producers.
• Maintain separate procedures for evaluating ADA effective-communication requests and accessibility obligations, recognizing that an FCC exemption does not determine ADA compliance.
• Monitor the FCC and Federal Register for the effective date and final filing procedures for §§ 79.1(i)(4) and (m)(6).

The Order represents a meaningful win for community media and local governments. It eliminates a potentially significant administrative burden that community media advocates and governmental commenters have identified for a decade, while preserving the underlying principle that non-exempt programming must remain accessible.

For PEG organizations, the message is straightforward: less FCC paperwork does not mean less accessibility. The new rules permit compliance to be handled more efficiently at the channel level while leaving substantive FCC captioning requirements—and independent ADA effective-communication obligations—intact.

Bradley Werner, LLC

Michael Bradley and Nancy Werner are nationally recognized and respected local government attorneys. Our firm is dedicated to representing local governments on wireless, broadband, cable, telecommunications, utilities, and right-of-way management issues. We have decades of experience representing municipalities on communications and utilities matters.