In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television station is required by law to operate its station in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This means that it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license.
To do so, each station must affirmatively identify those needs and problems and then specifically treat those local matters that it deems to be significant in the news, public affairs, political and other programming that it airs. Each station must provide the public with information about how it has met this obligation by means of quarterly reports, which contain a listing of the programming that it has aired that the station believes provided significant treatment of issues facing the community. Each station also must maintain and make available to any member of the public for inspection, generally at its studio, a local public inspection file which contains these reports, as well as other materials that pertain to the station’s operations and dealings with the FCC and with the community that it is licensed to serve.
WCPO makes a portion of those reports available through this website. Click on the document icons on this page to view these reports.
