Multichannel Obligations
Like commercial stations, NCE stations are allowed to lease subcarriers in exchange for money, essentially making the station a common carrier. This may be for a commercial audio, video, or data service, or a non-commercial one like a radio reading service for the blind.
NCE stations broadcasting in digital TV or HD Radio may lease part of their bandwidth (actually bitrate) in a similar manner, however, the commercial use is limited. The main program must always be non-commercial, and must not have its quality diminished excessively by increased lossy compression done in order to fit the auxiliary service within the allowable bit rate. NCE digital television (DTV) stations do not pay the FCC a percentage of their revenue from these leases as commercial DTV stations do. No such datacasting fee is levied on any analog or FM/AM station, whether commercial or NCE.
Read more about this topic: Non-commercial Educational
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