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The FCC today issued a Public Notice announcing its first EEO audit for 2016.  Letters to about 280 radio and television stations went out on February 24 asking for evidence of their compliance with the FCC’s EEO rules.  In today’s notice, the FCC released the form audit letter and list of stations that will be audited. Responses from the audited stations are due to be filed at the FCC by April 11. Licensees should carefully review this list of affected stations which was released with the Public Notice to see if any of their stations have been selected for the audit.

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 – including the requirements for wide dissemination of information about job openings and non-vacancy specific supplemental efforts to educate a station’s community about job opportunities in the media industry.  We recently summarized FCC EEO issues here, reminding broadcasters of the possibility of being audited.  We also wrote about the start of the obligations for the filing of FCC Form 397 EEO Mid-Term Reports – which started last year for radio groups with more than 11 full-time employees and will extend to TV licensees with 5 or more full-time employees in a few months, and are filed on the 4th anniversary of the filing deadline for the station’s license renewal – which will give the FCC another chance to review station EEO performance.  
Continue Reading FCC Announces First Round of 2016 EEO Audits for Radio and TV Stations

The FCC’s new contest rules for broadcasters, allowing the disclosure of material terms on the Internet rather than reading them on the air, becomes effective upon the publication in the Federal Register of their approval by the Office of Management and Budget. OMB approval has been obtained, and the Federal Register publication is scheduled to…

In an order released last month which has not received much attention, the FCC clarified its requirements for the filing of Biennial Ownership Reports. Much of the order deals with fixes to the report itself that will, for the most part, make the completion of the report administratively easier in terms of the physical data that needs to be entered into the form. However, certain new information-collection requirements call for broadcasters – both commercial and noncommercial – to start gathering information now from their attributable owners, including members of their governing boards, in order to enable the completion of the forms when they are next due to be filed, on December 1, 2017. We earlier wrote here about the FCC’s proposals in this proceeding (including the dazzling use of acronyms for various kinds of identification numbers assigned to attributable owners).

One of the principal purposes of the Biennial Ownership Reports is to gather information about the ownership and control of broadcast stations that will allow the FCC to slice and dice that information to use it to make decisions about issues like minority ownership in broadcasting and the concentration of broadcast ownership and control. Thus, the Biennial Reports gather information about race and gender of those with attributable interests in broadcast stations, and also about the interests those interest holders have in other stations. As we have written before, there have been complaints from some who have tried to analyze the information collected in the Biennial Reports that the data cannot be easily manipulated, particularly to track the ownership and control of individuals across multiple companies. Partially, this was attributed by the FCC to the failure of applicants to be able to get from all of their attributable owners information necessary to obtain an FRN (FCC Registration Number). That FRN was to be used to uniquely identify each holder of an attributable interest and track those individuals or entities through all of their media interests. In the past, there had been concerns that some interest holders were reluctant to provide the information necessary to get an FRN. The FCC has tried to remedy some of those concerns, and backed up their remedy with a suggestion that they will sanction interest holders who fail to provide the required information.
Continue Reading FCC Order on Biennial Ownership Requirements – All Broadcasters, Commercial and Noncommercial, Need to Start Collecting Information from Attributable Owners and Directors for Next Year’s Filing

In a decision released earlier this week, the FCC dismissed an application for a new noncommercial FM station based on a change in the majority of the applicant’s board of directors within a one-year period after the application was filed.  The change was deemed a major change in ownership, which the FCC rules says requires the assignment of a new file number – essentially meaning that the application is treated as a new application received after the filing window for the new FM stations was closed and was therefore dismissed.  The decision was one made by the full Commission which reversed a decision of its Media Bureau.  The Bureau had granted the application following a settlement with other mutually exclusive applications. The full Commission decision to instead dismiss the application was not made without some angst, as two of the Commissioners concurred in the decision but urged the FCC to change its rules before the next noncommercial filing window to avoid a similar result in the future.  But the decision does raise some questions about just what constitutes a change in control of a noncommercial broadcaster.

In this decision, the FCC found that two changes in the majority of the members of the board of directors of the applicant, where a majority of the board members changed in a period of less than one year, constituted a major change in ownership of the applicant requiring the assignment of a new file number to the application and its dismissal.  The decision contrasted this case with those of other noncommercial applicants in another new application filing window.  In that other window, the FCC granted blanket waivers of the major change rule to applicants that had a change in a majority of their boards over a much longer period of time while their applications slowly made their way through the Commission’s processes.  It was the difference between the relatively sudden changes in ownership in less than a year in the case decided this week as opposed to the more gradual changes in the other cases that seemed to make the difference in the outcome.  But the two Commissioners who separately commented on the case asked if this distinction really should make any difference, especially as the changes did not appear to be the result of any takeover of the organization, but instead were merely changes that occurred in the normal course of operation for this volunteer organization.
Continue Reading Changes in the Board of Nonprofit Corporation Doom FCC Application for New FM Station – Addressing Control Issues in Noncommercial Broadcasting

Last week, we wrote about the FCC’s decision to require that radio stations move their public inspection files online.  Commercial stations with 5 or more full-time employees that are located in Top 50 markets need to make the transition to the online file later this year once the FCC gets its new rules approved by the Office of Management and Budget following a Paperwork Reduction Act review.  Other radio stations will need to come into compliance, unless they get a waiver of the new rules, by March 1, 2018.  Our initial article about the decision was based on the FCC’s press release on the decision and comments made at the FCC meeting at which the obligation was adopted.  The FCC has now released the full-text of the decision (available here) and that order contains many new nuggets of information about the new obligations about which stations need to be aware.

The text of the decision does a good job of summarizing the obligations of radio broadcaster’s current public inspection file obligations (as well as those of the other entities that were also addressed by the new rule – cable systems, DBS operators, and Sirius XM for their satellite radio service).  For each of these services, the FCC addressed a number of issues.  Some of the radio questions addressed by the order include those set forth below.
Continue Reading FCC Releases Order on Online Public Inspection File – Answering Questions about Compliance with Radio’s New Obligations

It’s February, and we’re back to the normal cycle of FCC filings. Due to be placed in the public files of radio and TV stations with 5 or more full-time employees are EEO Public Inspection File Reports for radio and TV stations in the following states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma. Radio stations with more than 10 full-time employees licensed in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi also have an obligation to file an EEO Mid-Term Report providing the FCC with their last two EEO Public File Reports, plus providing the FCC with a contact person to provide information about their EEO programs.  For more about the Form 397 Mid-Term Report, see our article here.

Noncommercial Television Stations in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma and Noncommercial AM and FM Radio Stations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and New York have an obligation to file their Biennial Ownership Reports on February 1. While the FCC just last week adopted new rules to move noncommercial stations to a Biennial Ownership Report filing deadline consistent with commercial stations (by December 1 of odd numbered years), that rule is not yet effective so noncommercial stations in the states listed above need to continue to file their reports as scheduled on the anniversary date of the filing of their license renewal applications.
Continue Reading February Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters

The FCC today adopted rules to require that the public inspection files of radio stations (and of cable television systems and operators of satellite radio and television companies) to put their public inspection files online.  While, thus far, the FCC has only released a public notice summarizing its decision and not the full text explaining its reasoning, what is clear is that the new rule will go in to effect later this year for commercial radio stations with 5 or more full-time employees which are located in the Top 50 markets.  Other radio stations will have two years to come into compliance with the new requirements.

The rules, like the TV rules adopted several years ago (see our Q and A about the TV online file requirements, here), require that stations upload their files into an FCC-maintained database that will display the contents of each station’s file to the public.  According to today’s public notice, political broadcasting material only needs to be uploaded on a going forward basis upon the effective date of the new rules (i.e. only new documents created after the effective date of the new rules needs to be uploaded – existing documents would be maintained in the station’s paper file until the two-year retention period for political documents has expired).  It appears that all other documents not already in FCC databases will need to be fully uploaded by licensees within 6 months of the effective date of the new rules.  The documents that will need to be uploaded within that 6 months would include Quarterly Issues Programs Lists and the Annual EEO Public Inspection file report back to the beginning of the station’s current license term – documents not normally filed with the FCC.  Ownership Reports, FCC applications and similar documents filed with the FCC will be automatically uploaded to the station’s public file by the FCC’s own systems. 
Continue Reading FCC Adopts Online Public File Requirements for Radio, Satellite and Cable – To be Effective for Large Market Radio Later This Year

At the beginning of each year, we publish our broadcaster’s calendar of important dates – setting out the many dates for which broadcasters should be on alert as this year progresses.  The Broadcasters Calendar for 2016 is available here.  The dates set out on the calendar include not only FCC filing deadlines and dates…

It’s that time of the year when we need to dust off the crystal ball and make predictions about the legal issues that will impact the business of broadcasters in 2016.  While we try to look ahead to identify the issues that are on the agenda of the FCC and other government agencies, there are always surprises as the regulators come up with issues that we did not anticipate. With this being an election year, issues may arise as regulators look to make a political point, or as Commissioners look to establish a legacy before the end of their terms in office.  And you can count on there being issues that arise that were unanticipated at the beginning of the year.

But, we’ll nevertheless give it a try – trying to guess the issues that we will likely be covering this year.  We’ll start today with issues likely to be considered by the FCC, and we’ll write later about issues that may arise on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in the maze of government agencies and courts who deal with broadcast issues.  In addition, watch these pages for our calendar of regulatory deadlines for broadcasters in the next few days.

So here are some issues that are on the table at the FCC.  While the TV incentive auction may well suck up much of the attention, especially in the first half of the year, there are many other issues to consider.  We’ll start below with issues affecting all stations, and then move on to TV and radio issues in separate sections below. 
Continue Reading What Washington Has in Store for Broadcasters in 2016 – Looking at the Legal Issues that the FCC Will Be Considering in the New Year

Last week, we noted that an order acting on the FCC’s proposal to adopt a requirement for an online public file for radio, cable and satellite had been prepared and was circulating among the FCC commissioners for their review.  Yesterday, in a post on the FCC’s blog, the FCC Chairman confirmed that the decision…