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February 1 is the deadline by which broadcast stations in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma must place into their Public Inspection files their Annual EEO Public Inspection File Report.  The report must also be available on these stations' websites, if they have such sites.  The Annual EEO Public Inspection File Report provides information about the full-time jobs filled at the station in the previous year; the sources used by the station to recruit potential employees to fill the open positions; and the additional "supplemental efforts" conducted by the station, whether or not they had any employment openings, to educate and inform their communities about broadcast employment.   This obligation extends to all "station employment units" (groups of commonly controlled stations, serving a common geographical area, with at least one common employee) with 5 or more full-time employees (a full-time employee, for FCC purposes, being one working 30 or more hours per week).  Our firm's Advisory detailing the requirements for this report can be found here, with a model for the report at Appendix A of that advisory.  More information about Broadcasters' EEO obligations generally can be found in our Primer on the FCC's EEO Rules, here.

Yesterday, I conducted a webinar for the Kansas Association of Broadcasters to provide a refresher on broadcasters' EEO obligations under FCC rules, regulations and policies.  The slides used in that presentation can be viewed here.  With the next cycle of license renewal applications beginning later this year, stations need to be especially vigilant about EEO obligations to avoid scrutiny at renewal time, which could delay the processing of renewal applications (and potentially of any sale that might be underway at that time, see our post here) and possibly lead to fines or other penalties.    Radio stations in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi will file renewals on February 1, 2012;  radio stations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska will file their renewals on February 1, 2013; and those in New York and New Jersey will file by February 1, 2014.  TV stations will file one year later than radio stations located in their states.  As two years worth of public inspection file reports must be submitted with the license renewal applications, the hiring process used this year will be scrutinized by the FCC during the renewal process for stations in most of these states.  So make sure that you are following the rules, and documenting your EEO efforts for the FCC to avoid renewal-time problems. 

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The FCC today released another Public Notice announcing the random audit of the EEO performance of a number of broadcast stations - listing both radio and television stations that have to respond, with stations spread throughout the country.  The FCC has promised to annually audit 5% of all broadcast licensees to assess their compliance with the FCC's EEO rules.  These rules require the wide dissemination of information about job openings at their stations and "supplemental efforts" to educate their communities about employment opportunities at broadcast stations, even in the absence of employment openings.  The FCC's audit letter requires the submission of two years worth of the Annual Public File reports that stations prepare each year on the anniversary date of the filing of their license renewal applications.  These reports are placed in the station's public file and posted on their websites (if they have websites).  The FCC's public notice about this audit emphasizes the requirement for posting the Annual Report on a station's website, perhaps confirming rumors that we have heard about the FCC's staffers browsing station websites to look for these reports.

Stations are given until May 4 to complete the audit responses and submit them to the Commission.  Note that information needs to be supplied not just for the station named on the list, but also for all other stations in the same "station employment unit," i.e. a group of stations under common control, that serve the same general geographic area, and which have at least one common employee.  As recent audits have led to significant FCC fines (see our story here about fines issues just before the holidays), broadcasters who are listed on this audit list should take care in preparing their responses.  The audit notice should also remind other licensees who are lucky enough to avoid having been selected for inclusion on this audit list to review their EEO programs for FCC compliance purposes, as they could very well find themselves not so fortunate when the next FCC audit is announced.

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As we reminded broadcasters earlier this month, the first filings of FCC Form 397, the Broadcast Mid-Term EEO Report, will be due to be filed at the FCC on June 1.  This report is filed 4 years after the due date for filing of a station's license renewal application, and is to be filed by all radio station employment units with more than 10 full time employees, and all TV station employment units with five or more employees.  The first reports are due on June 1 by radio groups in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.  Every two months thereafter, stations in a different group of states will need to file their Mid-Term reports.  Last week, the FCC released a Public Notice clarifying some aspects of the filing process.

The Public Notice addressed two principal issues - (1) what happens when radio station clusters and their associated station employment units include stations in different states with different filing deadlines, and (2) what happens when employment units include both radio and television stations in the same state.  For radio employment units with stations in different states, the FCC reminds broadcasters that they should have made an election about which state's filing deadline to use back in 2003 when the current EEO rules were adopted, and they should have been using that election for each of their public file reports since then.  That same election would control the filing deadline for the Mid-Term report. 

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