Another EEO audit was announced by the FCC today – hitting about 200 radio stations and about 75 TV stations this time around. The Commission has pledged to audit 5% of all broadcast stations and cable systems each year to assure their compliance with the Commission’s EEO rules – requiring wide dissemination of information about job openings and supplemental efforts to educate their communities about job opportunities in the media industry. Today’s Public Notice announcing the audit, containing the form audit letter and listing the stations subject to the audit is here . Responses from the audited stations are due to be filed at the FCC by March 27.
All stations should review the audit letter as it provides a good outline of the documents that stations should be retaining to demonstrate their compliance with the FCC’s EEO rules. For more information about compliance with the EEO rules, see our recent post about an EEO webinar held by the FCC to explain its EEO rules. You may also want to review the last set of fines for EEO violations, about which we wrote here. Finally, look at our advisory on the basics of the EEO rules, here, and our most recent advisory on the requirements for the annual EEO public inspection file report, here.