FCC Fines

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Last month, I did a seminar at the College Media Association about the FCC legal issues that college broadcasters need to think about – talking about required FCC filings, pubic file obligations, underwriting issues, and programming that can get the broadcaster into trouble. Slides from that presentation, which present only an outline of the more detailed discussion that we had during the session, are available here.

I mentioned during the session that the FCC decided two years ago that they would be somewhat lenient with student-run radio stations who are first-time violators of certain FCC rules. In a case that we wrote about here, the FCC said that the fines that are imposed on commercial broadcasters for rule violations like the failure to include quarterly issues programs lists in the public inspection file (fines which can exceed $10,000 when numerous such lists are missing from the public file), would be greatly reduced – to something on the order of $1000 – for student-run stations that are facing their first violation, and provided that the fine dealt principally with paperwork matters and was not one that affected public health or safety. In a decision released by the FCC last week, the limits of that leniency were made clear.
Continue Reading A Seminar on FCC Rules for College Broadcasters – And an FCC Case on the Limits on Leniency on Fines For Rule Violations By Noncommercial Broadcasters

In a decision just released by the FCC, a TV station was admonished for including, in the credits of a TV program, the URL for a website that contained commercial material. As this was deemed by the FCC to be an isolated occurrence, the station was only admonished, not fined for the violation. But the decision is a good reminder for TV stations of the advertising and marketing restrictions that apply to children’s television programs and to links to websites contained in such programs.

The FCC’s rules prohibit a station from including a website’s address in programming directed to children 12 and under unless it meets a 4 part test. The four parts of that test are as follows:

  1. the website offers a substantial amount of bona fide program related or other noncommercial content;
  2. the website is not primarily intended for commercial purposes, including either e-commerce or advertising;
  3. the website’s home page and other menu pages are clearly labeled to distinguish the noncommercial from the commercial sections; and
  4. the page of the website to which viewers are directed by the website address is not used for e-commerce, advertising, or other commercial purposes (e.g., contains no links labeled “store” and no links to another page with commercial material)

In this case, the website had commercial content, leading to the admonition to the station. The URL was apparently visible for less than a second, in the credits, and ran only once. As this was an isolated instance, the station was not monetarily penalized, but the FCC did make clear that this was a rule violation.
Continue Reading FCC Admonishes TV Station for Including Commercial Website Address in Children’s Program – A Good Reminder on Children’s Television Program Restrictions

The FCC set a new record for a fine for a single violation of its indecency rules – $325,000 for a 3 second visual image of a penis run in a corner of a TV screen a single time on a TV station during its 6 PM news (a full description of the image is in the FCC’s Notice of Apparent Liability but, so as to not trigger too many spam filters, I will omit any more details in this article). The image in the newscast was a visual of a website, the website having several different frames, each with video images, and one of those frames had the image that led to the fine. This is the first time that the FCC has imposed a fine of $325,000, an amount authorized by Congress during the FCC’s last crackdown on indecency but never before used by the FCC. And not only did the FCC issue the Notice of Apparent Liability describing its legal reasoning for imposing the fine, but they also put out a press release publicizing the Notice, highlighting other recent indecency actions taken by the FCC, and warning broadcasters to pay attention to the decision. What happened here?

According to the FCC’s order, a TV station did a story on a former adult movie star who had retired from her former profession and begun to work with the local rescue squad. In providing background to what might otherwise be an off-beat human interest story about a person with a colorful past adapting to a new life as part of a local community, to provide context, the station showed the website of the adult movie company for which she had formerly worked. In editing the brief clip of the website into the story, neither the independent producer who put the story together nor anyone at the station noted the visual in one corner of the webpage with the image that got the station into trouble. According to the station, the image was not viewable on the editing machines used by those producing the story. But, apparently viewers at home, perhaps watching on bigger screens, were able to see the image, prompting the FCC complaint and other complaints to the station. While the image appeared on screen for only about 3 seconds, and only once, the FCC nevertheless selected this case to be its first in which to levy this new level of indecency fine – ten times higher than previous fines for a single broadcast of indecent material on a single station. Why?
Continue Reading FCC Proposes Fine of $325,000 in TV Indecency Case – What Prompted this Largest Fine Ever for a Single Incident?

In a post on the FCC’s blog, Commissioner Michael O’Rielly proposed allowing broadcasters to meet their EEO wide dissemination obligations solely through Internet sources. As we recently wrote, broadcasters need to widely disseminate information about job openings at their stations, using sources that are designed to reach all of the major groups that may exist within a station’s recruitment area. These sources could include school groups, minority organizations, social or community organizations, or other population groups that may exist in a station’s community. The current EEO rules, adopted a dozen years ago, suggested that a significant newspaper of general circulation may be one way to reach most of the groups within a community. But, as the Internet was not seen as universally available at that point, the FCC ruled that online sources alone would not be sufficient to meet these wide dissemination requirements. The FCC has continued to enforce that decision, even penalizing stations that relied solely on online sources for wide dissemination purposes (see, for instance, our summary of one such decision fining a number of stations that relied primarily on online sources, here). Commissioner O’Rielly suggests that this does not make sense in today’s world, as the Internet is much more available than the newspaper and other more “traditional” recruitment sources.

The Commissioner cites many statistics about the current availability of the Internet to diverse populations, and points to the fact that virtually all public libraries now have public Internet access, and one of the principal reasons for such Internet access if often to provide employment opportunities. He points to all of the online job sites that now exist, and the relative paucity of job listings in today’s newspaper. Will his proposal go anywhere?
Continue Reading Commissioner O’Rielly Proposes to Bring Mandatory FCC EEO Recruiting Into the Modern Era by Allowing Reliance on Internet Resources

A flurry of fines against broadcasters have come out of the FCC in the last week.  These fines highlight the scrutiny under which owners of broadcast stations can find themselves should an FCC Field Office inspector knock on their door.  If the FCC pays a visit and finds a violation, a station is often looking at a fine even if it quickly takes corrective action.  Let’s look at some of these fines and the issues raised by each.

First, a Regional Director of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau yesterday released a $17,000 Forfeiture Order (a notice of a fine) to a Michigan AM broadcaster for having a fence around its tower that had “separated” allowing unfettered access to the site and for missing quarterly issues programs lists in the public file.  The FCC refused to lower the fine, despite the licensee’s arguments that the quarterly issues programs lists were in fact at the station but there was “confusion” as to where they were at the time of the inspection, and its argument that it should not be responsible for the fencing issue as it did not itself own the real estate or the towers.
Continue Reading FCC Fines: $17,000 for Unsecure AM Tower Fence (Not Owning the Tower Site is No Excuse); $25,000 for Missing Quarterly Issues Programs Lists; $22,000 for Nonfunctioning EAS and Wrong Tower Coordinates

A few weeks ago, we wrote about several recent cases where tower owners were fined for not having their towers lights working in the manner that was required by their licenses.  In another case released this week, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau decided that a $20,000 fine was appropriate for a tower owner in Alaska …

As in any month, February has many impending deadlines for broadcasters and media companies – many routine regulatory obligations as well as some that are specific to certain proceedings.  First, let’s look at some of the routine filing deadlines.  On February 2, license renewal applications in the second-to-last filing window of this renewal cycle are due to be submitted to the FCC by TV stations in New York and New Jersey.  The last TV stations to have to file in a regular renewal cycle will be due on April 1, for those TV stations in Pennsylvania and Delaware.  After these stations complete their renewal filings, it will be another 5 years before another set of routine license renewals are to be filed.  Stations in Pennsylvania and Delaware should be broadcasting their pre-filing announcements on February 1 and February 16 (and there are also post-filing announcements that need to be run by the New York and New Jersey stations, as well as those in New England that filed their applications by December 1). 

Radio and TV stations in New York and New Jersey, as well as in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and Oklahoma, should be placing EEO Annual Public File Reports in their public files (online for TV and paper for radio, with links to the reports on their websites) by February 1 if they are part of an employment unit with 5 or more full-time employees.  By February 2, noncommercial TV stations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and New York should file with the FCC their Biennial Ownership Reports, and noncommercial radio stations in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma should be filing those same reports on February 2.  Commercial radio and TV stations in the entire country will be filing their Biennial Reports in December of this year.  A guide to many of the regular FCC filing deadlines can be found in our Broadcasters Calendar available here.
Continue Reading February Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – TV Renewals, EEO Reports, Lots of TV Incentive Auction Activity, OTT MVPD and Contest Comments, and Last-Minute January Deadlines for Webcasting

The FCC seems to be making another statement – releasing one decision upholding two very large fines against major cable programmers for improper use of EAS tones in ads for a movie, while just two days later releasing another decision approving a consent decree with a broadcaster imposing a penalty and monitoring conditions for using those tones in a radio show.  The first decision was by the full Commission.  It upheld a preliminary decision by its staff that we wrote about here, imposing fines of $1,120,000 against Viacom and $280,000 against ESPN.  The new case was against a Univision radio station in New York – agreeing in a consent decree to a $20,000 penalty.

The new case arose at a Spanish language station, where DJs in a comedy sketch on a morning radio show played the EAS tones repeatedly while joking about men who gain weight, and once even joking that playing the tone was illegal.  The FCC was alerted to the use of the tones by a radio listener who apparently was scanning the radio band, heard the tones and tried to determine what the emergency was – eventually figuring out that the alerts were not really part of an emergency at all.  The $20,000 penalty was combined with the FCC’s imposition of a requirement that the station prepare a compliance manual for its employees about the EAS system, conduct training programs, and report to the FCC about its compliance with the plan and the EAS rules for the next three years – including any EAS noncompliance at any of its stations.
Continue Reading More Big Penalties for Use of EAS Tones in Non-Emergency Programming

A consent decree, requiring $50,000 payment to the FCC by the licensee and programmer of a noncommercial radio station, demonstrates two potential problem areas for broadcasters involved in LMA or Time Brokerage (TBA) arrangements.  First, for noncommercial licensees it makes clear that the programmer cannot be paying the licensee any more for the programming time on the station than the costs of operation of the station itself – the licensee cannot “profit” from the LMA payments and use money for other non-broadcast activities of the licensee.  Second, for any party engaged in an LMA, it is important for the licensee to maintain control over station operations – even if the bulk of the programming is coming from its LMA partner.

The lesson of this case for the noncommercial licensee is that an LMA can’t be looked at as a revenue-generating activity for the licensee.  In this case, the licensee received significant LMA payments that were about twice the amount of the actual costs of its operation of the station.  These excess payments were to be credited to the ultimate purchase price of the station should the programmer choose to exercise an option at the end of the LMA term.  However, these payments were apparently not characterized as option fees, but instead as LMA payments.
Continue Reading $50,000 Penalty for LMA Operations – No Payments in Excess of Expenses for Noncommercial Licensees, and a Reminder that Licensee Must Remain in Control

With the obligation of television stations to file the quarterly Children’s Television Reports on FCC Form 398 by Monday (as the usual January 10 date is on a weekend) and the simultaneous requirement to place into their online public file documentation of compliance with the commercial limits in Children’s programming, it is worth reminding stations of the seriousness with which the FCC continues to view its children’s television rules.  There have been a number of fines and enforcement actions against TV stations in recent weeks, highlighting the need for stations to be vigilant about compliance with all aspects of the children’s television rules.  While the license renewal cycle, during which most of these issues come to light, is coming to an end in 2015 and stations that have already been renewed won’t face renewal scrutiny for at least another 5 years, issues that arise even this far out from the renewal window can haunt the station at the next renewal.  Moreover, with the public inspection files of stations now online, the FCC or other interested parties can view station’s compliance with these obligations at anytime from anywhere, and can easily file FCC complaints.  So TV stations cannot let down their guard simply because their license renewal has been granted.

In the past week, we saw one interesting case, where the FCC proposed to fine a station $3000 for failing to include the “E/I” symbol in the educational and informational programming directed to children on two of its multicast channels.  The FCC rejected arguments by the licensee that the programming on those channels was in Korean, and thus the E/I symbol would not make sense to the Korean viewers of the programing.  The Commission reasoned that, if the station wanted an exemption to the rules, where it could identify the programming as educational and informational in Korean text, the station should have asked for a waiver of the rules. 
Continue Reading Remember Children’s Television Compliance Obligations – The FCC Does Not Forget