EEO Compliance/Diversity

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The long-delayed revised Biennial ownership reports (about which we last wrote here) for commercial broadcast stations, on the new Form 323, are due on July 8, and the FCC is in the process of clarifying what it needs.  The Commission just released a Public Notice reminding broadcasters that the report is supposed to be detailing station ownership as of November 1, 2009 (when the reports were originally supposed to be filed).  Yet, in the 8 months since that date, many stations have changed ownership.  Is a new owner supposed to get the old owner to complete the form?  What if the old owner is off somewhere on a cruise, or simply wants nothing more to do with the station?  The FCC’s Public Notice clarifies (to some extent) what to do in that case – indicating that stations in that situation can file a waiver request, detailing why they can’t provide the ownership information for the owners who held the station license on November 1, 2009, and asking that the FCC waive its rules and excuse the filing of a report for this particular station.  This obligation to file the waiver request is on the current owner.  Note that the FCC does not say that it will grant all such waiver requests, and it specifically excludes from these waiver situations "pro forma" assignments or transfers, i.e. ones where the actual control has not changed but the legal entity holding that control has changed such as in a corporate reorganization where a station license is moved from a parent company to a subsidiary, or from a corporation to an LLC which is controlled by the same individual. 

Another looming issue may also create issues for the July 8 filings.  A group of state broadcast associations and broadcast owners has asked the US Court of Appeals to once again put the filing obligation on hold until the FCC justifies the information that is being collected.  Last week, the Court asked the Commission to justify its requirement that each person with an attributable interest in a station (i.e. anyone who would have to be reported on the Form 323) obtain an FRN (a unique identifier) which can only be obtained by furnishing  a Social Security Number.  While this may indicate that the Court is concerned about forcing every investor and officer and director of a broadcast company to provide this information, even if the Court forbids the collection of that information, it is possible that the FCC would move forward anyway with the Form 323 filing obligation – just removing the FRN from the required filing.  So don’t count on the July 8 deadline being pushed back – start preparing now to be on file by the deadline.Continue Reading July 8 Filing Deadline for Commercial Broadcast Stations Form 323 Ownership Report – Clarifications Issued

The FCC today released a Public Notice announcing the next group of broadcast stations subject to a random audit of their compliance with the FCC’s EEO rules. The Notice lists radio and television stations across the country that nust respond to a Commission inquiry and provide information and documentation about their EEO efforts. Annually, the FCC…

In 2008, the FCC adopted a requirement that broadcast stations include in their advertising contracts a provision that says that advertisers will not discriminate on the basis of race or gender.  We wrote about that requirement here, and our post was greeted with significant surprise by many broadcasters as the requirement did not glean much publicity when it was first adopted.  Today, the FCC issued an Erratum to that two year old requirement, eliminating from the certification its application to discrimination in advertising based on gender.  Instead, the Erratum stated it was only discrimination based on race or ethnicity that was prohibited.  The Erratum stated that this language "more accurately" reflected the "Commission’s clear intent" in adopting the requirement for the certification in advertising contracts.

The removal of "gender" from the advertising discrimination certification seems to recognize the common-sense advertising principal that some advertising, by its very nature, may be targeted to one gender or another.  But the correction of this language through an Erratum seems to avoid many of the hard issues that remain with this certification.  The Commission was very terse in its explanation of how this certification was supposed to work and exactly what it was supposed to prevent.  There were certain situations that seem to fit within the prohibitions – situations where the advertiser of a general market product refuses to allow it to be advertised on stations that target minority audiences (see our discussion of the Mini Cooper advertising controversy here).  This was to avoid the "no Spanish, no urban dictates", ruling out advertising on stations with urban formats or those programmed in Spanish, that some felt were attached to some advertising orders.  But there are many other questions that remain to be clarified.Continue Reading FCC Corrects Advertising Nondiscrimination Certification – Removes Gender From Certification

On February, 18, 2010, David Oxenford conducted a seminar for the Utah Broadcasters Association on legal issues that affect radio and television broadcasters.  First, David summarized the various broadcasting legal and policy issues pending before the FCC and Congress.  David’s PowerPoint presentation is available here.  Broadcasters interested in Washington issues that may affect them this year may…

February 1st marks the deadline for two FCC EEO requirements.  First, by February 1st, radio and television stations located in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma must prepare their Annual EEO Public File Reports. Specifically, stations or Station Employment Units (SEUs) in those states with five or more full time…

Each year poses a new set of regulatory deadlines, and to help you remember all of those deadlines, the Davis Wright Tremaine Broadcast Group has prepared a calendar setting out the dates that broadcasters need to remember in 2010.  The calendar can be found here, and sets out FCC imposed deadlines for, among…

At more and more broadcast conventions, station owners have been asking questions about their legal liability for the use of social media.  What is their liability for the use of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other services?  Could owners have liability if their station maintains its own page on which friends and followers may post statements which are defamatory or which could otherwise give rise to…

The Commission is worried about the future of the broadcast media, and they are trying to figure out what they can do.  The last two weeks have been full of news about actions being taken by the FCC which may or may not lead to a reshaping of broadcasting as we know it.  We wrote about the discussion of re-purposing some or all of the television spectrum for wireless broadband users.  We also told you about the workshops to be held this week as the first step in the Commission’s Quadrennial review of it multiple ownership rules – looking at whether to allow more media consolidation to help broadcasters compete in the new media landscape or, conversely, whether there should be a reexamination of the existing rules to make them more restrictive against big media.  Last week, the Commission announced two more actions – the appointment of a Senior Advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to study "the future of media in a changing technological landscape", and a workshop on "Capitalization Strategies for Small and Disadvantaged Businesses."  What is the impact of all of these actions?

The appointment of the Senior Advisor, Steven Waldman, is perhaps the most interesting action.  Mr. Waldman, the founder of the website Belief.net (recently sold to News Corp), is charged with determining how the FCC can assure that the media will serve the public interest in the 21st century, and that "all Americans receive the information, educational content, and news they seek."  He is instructed to work with all Bureaus to determine how best to implement these ambitious goals.  It is interesting that, while one might be inclined to look at this with the assumption that his charge is to look at broadcasting, the public notice announcing his appointment and his charge does not once use the word "broadcast" or "broadcasting."  Instead, it talks almost exclusively about the new media and technology and the potential that they have for serving the public good.Continue Reading FCC Senior Advisor to Chairman to Study Media Change and a Workshop on Media Financing for Small Business – Looking to Reinvent the Broadcast Industry?

As we’ve written before, the FCC every year aims to randomly audit 5% of all broadcast stations and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to assure their compliance with the Commission’s EEO rules.  Every few months, the FCC releases a list of the lucky regulatees who have to respond to the audit.  Today, the Commission issued…