FCC Fines

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FCC tower lighting and marking violations are among those treated most seriously by the FCC, given their potential for tragedy should there be an incident with an aircraft due to improper tower maintenance.  Today, in two Notices of Apparent liability, the FCC proposed fines against tower owners for such violations.  In one case, where the…

Fines for noncommercial broadcasters who air acknowledgments of their donors and contributors that sound too much like commercials have been a problem area for many noncommercial educational radio and television stations, and have resulted in significant fines from the FCC.  The FCC allows "enhanced underwriting announcements" that identify a sponsor, what their business is…

The FCC today issued fines of as much as $12,000 for public file violations.  Together with the fine issued earlier this week for a station that did not allow unrestricted access to its public file, these actions make clear how seriously the FCC takes the obligations of broadcast stations to maintain and make available their public inspection files.  The fines issued today went to both commercial and noncommercial stations, with two noncommercial stations each receiving fines of $8000 for not having complete public files.  Violations are expensive – even if your station is owned by a noncommercial entity.

The largest fine, $12,000, went to a commercial station that, when inspected by FCC Field Inspectors in March 2010, could not produce anything in its public file more recent than 2006.  While the licensee claimed that the documents were kept at the office of the station owner several hundred miles away, the FCC found that the violation of having nothing from more than 3 years of operation was so egregious that an upward adjustment from the standard $10,000 public file fine was warranted.  The two fines issued to noncommercial stations were not as egregious, but still resulted in significant fines.  A review of the details of those cases are instructive as to the excuses and mitigating circumstance that the FCC rejected when the licensees tried to argue for a significant reduction or elimination of the fine.  Continue Reading Big FCC Fines for Public File Violations for Commercial and Noncommercial Stations

The FCC released a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture today, proposing a $10,000 fine against a public TV station in Los Angeles for requiring an appointment to view the station’s public inspection file. This case shows how seriously the FCC takes the requirement of open and unfettered access to a broadcast station’s public file.  An FCC agent visited the station’s main studio twice without identifying himself as an FCC employee.  Both times, the station’s security guard refused to let him see the station’s public inspection file or speak with the station manager without an appointment.

On the third visit, the FCC agent identified himself as such and was allowed to view the station’s public inspection file "after a thorough examination of the agent’s badge and several phone calls to [station] personnel." 

The public inspection file was found to be complete. However, the station was fined $10,000 for "willfully and repeatedly" failing to make the public inspection file available.  The FCC stressed that "stations cannot require members of the public to make appointments to access a station’s public inspection file."Continue Reading FCC Fines TV Station $10,000 for Requring Appointment to View Public Inspection File

The FCC today upheld a $4000 fine issued to a broadcaster for broadcasting a telephone conversation without first getting the permission of the people on the other end of the line, denying reconsideration that the broadcaster had sought – arguing that the fine violated its First Amendment rights.  The telephone conversation that led to the fine was between a station employee and two airport officials, about a controversy concerning the local airport.  As summarized in our original article about that decision, the alleged violation arose from a call by the station employee to the airport officials to talk about the local controversy.  The employee allegedly identified himself as a station employee, and started to ask questions – without specifically stating that the call was being broadcast.  Even though the airport officials kept talking once they knew that the call was being recorded, the FCC still fined the station $4000, finding that the violation occurred once the officials said "hello" on the phone without having been told beforehand that the call was being broadcast.  The decision denying reconsideration is most notable for its long discussion of the First Amendment, which the station argued should override the FCC’s rules against broadcasting a telephone conversation without prior permission.

The broadcaster argued that, as in any case restricting speech rights, the FCC needed to show a compelling interest to restrict a broadcaster’s free speech rights.  Here, the broadcaster argued, no such compelling interest justifying the FCC’s blanket rule against broadcasting a conversation without getting prior approval had been shown.  The broadcaster made the point that this was not some case of a wake up call to a visiting celebrity, or a spoof call to a prominent person where the caller was not identified, but was instead a case of a reporter calling a news source for comment on a news controversy.  The subjects knew that they were talking to the station, and thus should have assumed that the substance of their statements might end up being broadcast.  The mere fact that their actual statements were being broadcast live should not, contended the broadcaster, be a sanctionable offense. Continue Reading Rule Against Broadcast of Telephone Conversation Without Prior Permission is Constitutional, Says FCC

The FCC has issued Notices of Apparent Liability against two radio licensees for apparent EEO violations at their respective station clusters. These NALs, issued on the next to last day of the FCC’s business year, are the first to address EEO violations in a year and a half. The common thread in both NALs was the licensee’s failure to properly recruit for new hires, relying primarily on "walk-ins" or referrals in lieu of the "wide dissemination" required for information about job openings.  In one case, where the licensee failed to widely disseminate information about 28 job openings, the FCC proposed a fine of $20,000.  In the other case, where the station owner was able to document recruitment efforts for some of its openings, the FCC proposed a fine of $8000 for the six jobs where the required recruitment efforts were found lacking. 

In the first NAL, the $20,000 proposed forfeiture was based on a finding that the licensee failed to properly recruit for 28 of the 29 full-time vacancies filled over a six year period.  Instead, the licensee relied on "walk-ins" and referrals for six vacancies, and used the Internet or on-air ads for 22 vacancies.  These methods alone do not constitute sufficient dissemination of job vacancies under FCC rules.  In a post last year, we explained that the FCC does not consider Internet advertising alone to be sufficient for recruitment purposes, and questioned whether that policy is appropriate in this day and age.Continue Reading FCC Imposes Fines Up to $20,000 for EEO Violations

In recent years, the FCC has been to aggressively enforcing a policy requiring broadcasters to announce all material rules of a contest on the air enough times for a reasonable listener to hear the announcements.  This past week, there was yet another case where this policy was enforced, resulting in a $4000 fine to a broadcaster.  While the FCC continues to enforce this policy, at least one broadcaster has reportedly decided that a fine for not having broadcast of the material rules of a contest is not justified, and is apparently ready to take the FCC on in Court in a case where the FCC tries to enforce a fine issued several years ago.

The newest fine involved a station in Cleveland, which ran a contest called "Who Said That" where a clip of the voice of a sports figure was played on the air.  The first person to be able to identify the speaker won a prize.  Apparently, if no prize was awarded, a new prize was added each week until the voice was identified, when the winner would get all of the accumulated prizes.  In this case, the station ran an announcement about the rules regularly until the station aired a clip that was not identified for some time.   As the clip remained unidentified over the course of many weeks, and then many months, the station apparently became less rigorous about announcing the rules.  But, more importantly to the FCC, the station did not announce on the air all of the prizes that had accumulated, nor did it announce that some of the prizes had become unavailable and had been replaced over time by prizes of what the station considered to be of an equivalent value.  As the station had not announced the "extent, nature and value of the prizes," the FCC found the station to be in violation – even though the right to substitute prizes of equal value was contained in the written rules published by the station.Continue Reading FCC Fines Another Broadcaster For Not Announcing All Rules of a Contest – While One Broadcaster Protests