The OAB’s Non-Commercial Sustaining Announcement (NCSA) program, also called the Public Education Partnership (PEP) program, provides government agencies and non-profit organizations with an opportunity for statewide distribution of their public service messages to educate or encourage Ohioans to take action.
NCSA-PEP sponsors contract with the OAB to distribute their spots to all stations across the state. Stations are asked to air the spots evenly across all days and dayparts during the campaign and provide affidavits on a monthly basis or at the conclusion of the campaign. The OAB compiles a summary report of airplay which details the markets and stations that aired the spots, along with the number of airings and approximate value of the airtime provided. Our goal is to provide the sponsoring organization at least $3 for every $1 invested, and in many cases we deliver an even higher return.
Station participation in NCSA-PEP campaigns is voluntary. Although stations do not receive compensation for airing spots, the OAB invests the fees we receive into services for our members. These services include:
- Free access to our legal resources: Members can contact either our FCC hotline or Ohio Info-Line at no cost to get answers to question about advertising rules, and FCC rules and regulations. Members also receive regular bulletins on relevant issues from our legal counsel.
- Free access to sales training resources: Members can use the range of training sessions available, including P1 Plus new seller training and LocalBroadcastSales monthly webinars, both live and archived. Additionally, stations receive Insight Edge, a weekly newsletter with headlines from key advertising categories.
Free access to OAB-exclusive webinars: Our federal and state law firms provide sessions on a variety of regulatory and compliance topics including political broadcasting rules, public file requirements, advertising rules and employment law. - In addition, members have full access to the OAB’s website which provides other legal resources, our job site and much more. Although NCSA-PEP fees cannot be used to support our advocacy efforts, the NCSA-PEP program allows us to use our member dues for our advocacy-related activities at the state and federal levels.
The OAB takes great care not accept sponsors that have budgets large enough to purchase advertising directly from stations. In some cases, sponsoring organizations have decided to buy commercial advertising directly from stations as a result of the results they received from their NCSA-PEP campaign.
Our traffic instructions to stations include a suggested minimum number of airings per month for each campaign. Some stations schedule each campaign using that suggested minimum, others designate a given number of spots for OAB NCSA-PEP campaigns each month and allocate a percentage of these spots to each campaign. We realize that station inventory is very valuable and limited and appreciate any contribution stations can make.