Skip to main content

LOCAL Television Act: Status of Spending for Fiscal Year 2005

GAO-06-858R Published: Jul 07, 2006. Publicly Released: Jul 07, 2006.
Jump To:
Skip to Highlights

Highlights

In December 2000, the Congress passed the Launching Our Communities' Access to Local Television Act of 2000 (LOCAL TV Act). The act created the Local Television Loan Guarantee Program and established the LOCAL Television Loan Guarantee Board to finance projects to provide access to signals of local television stations to households in areas with limited or no access to such signals from a commercial, for-profit satellite service or other multichannel video provider. The program authorizes the board to approve loan guarantees up to 80 percent of loans, totaling no more than $1.25 billion in aggregate; however, since inception of the program, no loan guarantees have been approved and the program has not been utilized. Section 1006 of the act requires that we perform an annual audit of the (1) administration of the provisions of the act and (2) financial position of each applicant who receives a loan guarantee under the act, including the nature, amount, and purpose of investments made by the applicant. In April 2005, we issued our required annual report covering fiscal year 2004. Since there continue to be no loan guarantee recipients for GAO to audit, this report primarily addresses whether program administration during fiscal year 2005 satisfied the provisions of the act.

Full Report

Office of Public Affairs

Topics

Administrative costsAuditsFederal fundsFunds managementGovernment guaranteed loansProgram evaluationProgram managementReporting requirementsTelevisionTelevision broadcastingUnobligated budget balances