nts in cost accounting or accounting for cost of goods (and services) sold. Fundamentally, all costs in an organization must be accounted for directly or allocated to overhead. Profit or non-profit, all entities must have income to meet expenses or cease to exist. Managing communi- cations cost in many organizations is a line on each department's budget simply labeled telephone expense. The typical attitude and approach is simply that it exists, and increases or shrinks each year depending on departmental headcount. If employee population grows, telephone expense grows, if it shrinks, telephone expense shrinks. As for other non-telephone communications expenditures, they are likely to be paid, consolidated, and allocated out to various departments by some process that in effect re-writes and restructures factual circumstances without regard for the matching principle used in accounting. PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS Technical operations cost centers such as MIS and broadcast oper- ations are something of a special case. Although they will have telephone expense as a line item in their budgets, this covers mainly administrative equipment, facilities, and services. Resources required for content transport and supporting communications related to pro- gram and special event production may be budgeted and managed as part of the event or program production budget. Data communica- tions equipment and facilities tied to news gathering, special events, or regular programs may be budgeted and managed as part of an overall MIS department support function or be folded into the cost center accounting of the program or event. Application-specific costs may also be broken out into an individual line item. This means it is budgeted and tracked as a peer line item in a department or cost center. Accounting for expenditures outside the standard departmen- tal cost accounting system requires special treatment in the form of a specific project where each expense item is classified, recorded, and 